Christopher: There's a thousand ways to disbelieve. There's one way to believe. It's true, I embrace it. If God has said the crucified one is my son. And if we are saying with our minds or our hearts or our mouths or our lives, if we're saying, I don't believe that.
I don't believe that. Then of course, what we're doing is saying, God, you're a liar.
Caleb: The following message was recorded at King's Tree Church. May the spirit use it to help you see, savor, and sing the beauty of God in the crucified and risen Jesus Christ.
Christopher: Well, this morning we'll be returning back to first John. After today we have four sermons left working through this first epistle of John, and then we'll be on to another book together, but as we wrap up this book, John's bringing together many of the streams of his thought, pulling them together, presenting them to his audience in a final clarified way, and so we're touching on a lot of the things we've looked at before, but in summary fashion. So that's where we'll be, first John chapter five, but before we begin, if the parents would like their kids from four ish to 10 to head downstairs for the kids church, they can go down now. Then of course the nursery is downstairs as well if any parents would like to utilize that. The rest of us are going to be in first John chapter five.
We're gonna look at verses nine up through twelve this morning. So by way of refresher, because we had a snowstorm in between, there's supposed to be one, usually Sean will preach, I'll preach, then Sean will preach, and we'll be right back to one John, but we had the snowstorm which has divided us by two weeks from the last time we were in this book. So by way of refresher, last time we were in one John, John introduced this idea of the testimony of God. The testimony or the witness that God has born, and if you think about that, it's an amazing thing to say that the creator of the universe has given testimony, has borne witness to something, has declared something to his creatures, but he has. John told us God has given a testimony, and we saw that ultimately this testimony is the declaration that the one who comes as king and savior through the cross, through the water and blood of his passion, the one who comes as king and savior through the cross is the son of God.
This one is my son. That's God's testimony. To point as it were to the cross as it's illumined by the resurrection, and to say this one dying right here, this one pouring out his life here, this one dying in this way, who is risen, this is my son. And more than that, we saw that God's son is ultimately the revelation of God's self. John one eighteen says, No one has ever seen God, but the only begotten God who is in the Father's bosom, he has made him known.
He has made God known to us. So the son is the making known of God. So if God's testimony is this is my son at the cross, then that testimony is also this is where you know me. God's testimony to his son is God's testimony to himself. Such that when Jesus is lifted up on the cross in our place, when his heart is pierced for our sins, as truly happened, when he pours down the living water of the spirit, and the atoning blood of his own life, When this is happening, God is saying, this is my son, this is my son, and this alone is the one in whom you know me.
This is the one, this is my son in whom you know me. So that's the testimony of God that he's given to all the world. And we ended last week with John's challenge to us where he said, if we believe the testimony of humans, how much more should we believe the testimony of God? If all of us believe humans who give us testimony, whether it's this is the weather today, or this is the directions to my house, or this is when we're meeting, we believe the testimony people give. How much more John says, should we believe the testimony that God has given?
And that's where we're going to go this morning. Because what John does here by taking this idea of the testimony of God and saying, if you believe humans, shouldn't you believe God? What John's doing is taking a theological idea, the testimony of God, and pressing it home to us to say basically, what are you going to do with this? What are you going to do with the testimony of God? If you listen to people, will you listen to this?
What are you, what am I going to do right now sitting here in these pews, standing here at this pulpit, going out from here into the day? What are we going to do with the testimony of God? So that's the question we're looking at today. Let's look at verses five through Or sorry, nine through 12 of chapter five. It says this, If we receive the testimony of men, the testimony of God is greater.
For this is the testimony of God, that he has borne witness concerning his son. That's the testimony of God. He has borne witness concerning his son. Verse 10, whoever believes in the son of God has the testimony in himself. Whoever does not believe God has made him a liar because he has not believed the testimony that God has born concerning his son.
And this is the testimony that God gave us eternal life and this life is in his son. Whoever has the son has life. Whoever does not have the son does not have life. You can hear the resonance from our memory verse right there. Whoever has the son has life.
Whether does not have the son does not have life. Let me pray for us and we'll look at these things more closely together. Father, it is a awesome thing to hear the testimony that you have given. You, father, before whom angels of fire fall down in awe and wonder. You whose voice called the stars into existence.
You speak with that same voice in Christ to us, and you have born witness. This is your son. And it's an awesome thing to hear that, and I pray father that we would hear it and respond rightly to it. We would that you would create in us, ignite in us a believing apprehension of this testimony that we would lay hold of it, not just as a distant fact, but as our life that we would lay hold of this and believe you, father. I pray that you would, that would be the case today.
Your people would believe what you have said. Believe it in the light and the joy and the peace, believe it in the night and the cold and the pain, that we would believe your witness about yourself. To the glory of your name, and to the life of your people. We pray these things in Jesus name, amen. So right at the center of today's passage is this division between two different responses.
You can see that in verse 10, whoever believes, da da da da da, he goes on, whoever does not believe. So there's this distinction at the center of our text. Some will believe, some will not believe. We're going to look at that in a moment. That's where we're gonna spend the majority of our time today.
But before we look at those two responses, I wanna look at a principle that's even deeper than that underneath those two, which is the simple principle that God's testimony demands a response from those who receive it. God's testimony demands a response. God cannot speak, and then we're left That doesn't have anything to do with me. No, if we have heard the testimony of God, our soul is now put in a bind of response. We must respond in one of two ways.
So John's claim in this text is that God has said to the entire world, and to everyone who hears my voice right now, God has given a testimony, and the testimony is this, this one who dies on the cross and rises again is my son. This is my son who comes through the water and the blood. This is the Son of God. This is the King of Kings. That's the testimony God has given.
Now someone can say, Well, I don't think that's true. Someone can say, I don't think Jesus of Nazareth ever existed. Someone can say, I don't think he ever rose from the dead. I think he died just like any other person. Somebody can certainly say that, but the fact remains that God has given this testimony.
This is my son. This is the king. This is the Lord. This is the savior. That testimony has been made.
And once that testimony has been made, once we've been presented with that as all of you have been now, then we must respond in one of two ways, either belief or unbelief. That's where it divides. All of us now having heard this testimony are either in moving into believing or disbelieving. And I should say remaining undecided or agnostic is disbelieving. Because if I come to you and say, hey, I'll meet you at five at the church, and you say, Well, we'll see.
I don't know. I don't know if you mean that. I don't know if that's true. Okay, you don't believe me. That's fine.
You just don't believe me. Passively don't believe me, but you don't believe me. And so don't think that saying, Well, I'll just sit on the fence, is safe place, because the claim in this text is God has told you something. And to sit on the fence about whether or not it's true that God, whether or not what God has said is true is to say, well, don't believe you. I don't believe you are God, because if I believed you were God, and I believed you were saying this, I would believe it.
And if I'm sitting on the fence or don't believe it, then I'm over here in this unbelieving camp. So our soul, all souls are divided into two camps here, and this is where John's language reaches out of the clean theological space of, oh, that's interesting, and touches our life, and says, you can't escape unscathed. You can't get out of here unscathed. And that's the case whenever we open up scripture really, and that's the case whenever scripture is taught faithfully, and may it be that I'm teaching it faithfully, there's no just getting around it. There's no just watching.
The opening of scripture, whether it's for yourself or whether it's being preached, the opening of scripture is not a spectator sport. It's not something you can watch from a distance and say, oh, that's interesting. Okay, I'm gonna leave now without it touching my life. The opening of scripture gets into our life. It makes claims on our soul.
So we've heard the words of the apostle. We've heard him lay out the testimony of God from the cross. We've heard him say, God has sworn an oath. This one is my son. And now there's stakes for us.
Now we have to respond. Either you're believing it, I'm believing it, or we're not. So again, I hope you don't hear this sermon today, or any sermon, as something that you can remain safely outside of, like when you're watching a rodeo on TV. I don't know how many people watch rodeos on TV, but let's say you're watching a rodeo on TV. It's far away from you.
You can watch it. You can say, oh, that's interesting. Oh wow, look what he did. Oh cool, I'm done. Turn it off, walk away.
It does nothing to your life. This sermon, and any sermon ought to be, like you beating down in the arena with the bull. There's stakes. This means something for you. You're not gonna get out of here unchanged, because the word says, This is what God has done.
This is what God has said. And now all of us here have to say, What do I do with that? What do I do with that? And to say, I don't do anything with it. It doesn't have anything to do with me, is to make a decision.
So that's where we are this morning. And specifically the decision that John presses upon us this morning is what am I? What are you? What are we going to do with God's testimony given concerning his son? God has condescended to as it were stand here before us, we lowly creatures, and to give a testimony to us concerning his son.
My son is the one who comes through the cross. My son is the one manifest in this death and this resurrection. He is my son, congregants of King's Tree Church, people who are attending here this morning. That's what God's saying to us, and how will we respond? So there's two responses possible, belief or unbelief, and before we look at them, one more caveat to make, both these words are in the present tense in the text that John wrote in Greek.
Why does that matter? Because present tense means continuing. John is not just saying, okay, there's two responses, either you believed or you disbelieved as if those were specific moments that just that's it. He's saying there's two responses, either you're believing or you're not believing. So John is not so much concerned with, did you once make a decision for Jesus?
He's concerned with, are you believing in Jesus right now? Are you leaning upon him right now? Are you believing the testimony of God now or not? Think about Israel. When they went out into the desert, Yahweh said to them, I will bring you through the desert.
I will supply for your needs. I will bring you to myself, and they believed him. But then what happened? Things got hard. They didn't know where the food was gonna come from.
They didn't know where the water was gonna come and they started to accuse God and say, Why'd you bring us out here to die? So they believed him in a particular moment, but that belief evaporated when things got hard. So are they believing him in the desert? No, no, they're not. So too, the belief that John is talking about here is not, I made a decision when I was five, and right, I'm good now, aren't I?
He's not saying that. He's saying, are you believing him? God's testimony about Jesus is continually reverberating out into the world, and our hearts are continually responding to that either by believing it, I'm believing it, I'm holding to it, or disbelieving it. Think about a rope. You're down in a hole.
Somebody throws you a rope. You grab onto it and then let go and say, Why aren't you helping me? It's like, no, you have to hold on. You have to be holding on to that. We have to be holding on to Christ, believing Christ, and praise God, when you hold onto Christ, I've shown you this before, when you hold onto Christ, this is you.
You're holding onto him. He's holding you, so you've gotta hold him, but look at which hand here is decisive. This hand isn't all that strong. This hand isn't moving. So we've gotta hold onto him.
We've gotta believe him, but take heart. Like we sang earlier, he holds us fast. Back to the text, the point here is John saying, King's Tree Church, those who are hearing these words, are you believing this or disbelieving this? Okay, let's look at the two options. Believing, that's the first one, believing.
So one response to the testimony God gives at the cross, this is my son, is to embrace it. To embrace it. Not just to say, yeah, I believe that, because of course the demons believed this was the son of God dying, but to embrace that as my life, to confess the crucified and risen Jesus is the son of God, is my king and master and Lord. That's believing this testimony, holding onto it, and by grace, this truth to become the sun around which every aspect of my life orbits. Christ is Lord and God.
The crucified one is the son of God and king of kings. This reality becomes the center around which my life is orbiting. That's belief. That's believing this. And what does John say?
If we're believing it, if we hear the testimony and we say, yes, that's my life, Then what happens? Look at verse 10. Whoever believes or is believing in the Son of God has the testimony in himself. So as we believe in him, God's witness given on the cross about who he is goes from being something out there to something in here. It's like the difference between a well of water that I go out to to get water and bring it back into my house versus having a spring planted in the middle of my house bubbling up, a spring planted in my soul bubbling up with life.
And it seems when John says this, that the witness will be in those who believe. It seems that what he's getting at here is the Holy Spirit. That the Holy Spirit takes up residence in our soul. It says elsewhere that God has poured out the spirit into our hearts. It's like our hearts are these vessels, and upon trusting Christ, the spirit of God himself is poured like oil into the dry cracked vessel of our soul.
He fills our soul, and he, the spirit, becomes the witness in us that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. The spirit in us that this one on the cross is the Son of God. It's as if the witness of the spirit hammers the cross into the deepest part of ourself as an anchor for our soul, that whatever else is true, this is true. The one on the cross is raised from the dead as son of God and king of kings, and I wonder if some of you have experienced this kind of internal witness before. This just, it's declared inside of my soul Jesus is the Christ and the Son of God.
I can't not believe that. I can't release that. I can't deny that. I hesitate to use a personal experience in a sermon, but hopefully it would be helpful. I have gone through in my own life a number of prolonged seasons of vicious doubt where it's just hard.
It seems like these clouds come over, and everything that seemed true is just thrown into confusion. During these times, historical arguments for the faith, logical arguments for the faith, even exegetical arguments seem not to hold water. It's like, I don't know, I can see holes in that. I can see problems. I can see problems.
And during those times, the only thing that's been left to me, the single thread upon which my whole soul has been hanging is simply Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. I can't say anything else. I can't, and that won't go away. Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. It's not because I can argue it.
It's not because I can defend it. It's not because I have all the answers. It is immovably planted in my soul, and somebody could say, Well, it's because this is how you were raised. It's because this I'm saying that's the internal witness of the Holy Spirit saying you are mine, and you're not going to deny this. I'm not gonna let you deny this.
The witness of God planted in our heart. So that's what is going on here it seems. When you believe in Christ, and an internal witness is planted in you, and whether or not you can explain it, or you can defend it, or you even feel it, the spirit says, you know Jesus is the Christ. You know he's the son of God. You can't finally release that.
So that's the one thing. That's what happens when we believe Jesus is the Christ according to this text. But then there's disbelief. There's disbelief. The testimony is given.
God points his finger to the cross and says, This is my son. And the heart says, I don't believe that, or we'll see, or that doesn't matter for me, or any number of things. There's a thousand ways to disbelieve. There's one way to believe. It's true, I embrace it.
There's a thousand ways to disbelieve. Well, I don't think this. Well, it's just this, or all religion is just for power, or who knows about those facts, or all these things. Okay, but they're all ways to disbelieve. And what's John say?
This is shocking here. To disbelieve this testimony is what? Verse 10b, Whoever does not believe God has made him a liar, has made him a liar because he has not believed in the testimony that God has born concerning his son. Now that's strong language, but you see how it makes sense. If God has said the crucified one is my son, and if we are saying with our minds or our hearts or our mouths or our lives, if we're saying, I don't believe that, I don't believe that, then of course what we're doing is saying, God, you're a liar, or you yourself are a lie, but we're saying, no, you're a liar.
So John kind of strips away the soft language of, well, I'm not certain, or well, everybody has their truth, or well, maybe, And he says, Let's be honest, you're saying God's a liar, or you're saying God's a lie. Let's be honest about what's happening. And so to hear the testimony, The crucified one is risen, and this is the son of God. This is your savior and master and Lord. To hear that and to not believe it with your life, to not bow down to that reality and say, Christ is my God.
If that's you, then you're calling God a liar. If that's me, then I'm calling God a liar. That's what's happening. You're saying, No, you lie, or you are a lie. Okay, now aside from that being shocking language, think about what that means.
To disbelieve in Jesus, and so to call God a liar, think about what that means for our life. God is the foundation of all reality. He's the sustainer of every moment and molecule that exists. He is the ground upon which logic and meaning and purpose are built. He's the ground.
And so in a life that says, This one is a liar, what's happening is that the foundation of all purpose and meaning is being taken away. So to disbelieve in Christ is to undercut, to dig out from underneath your own feet the foundation of any meaning, of any purpose, of any reason or rationality in all of life. It's to dismantle reality from the inside out. To just give you a little bit more, a less abstract idea, imagine you're at a work zone, and you've got your pylons built, and you got your cement foundation or whatever, you're laying everything together, and all of a sudden the cement of the foundation turns into sand. What's gonna happen?
All the pill, everything just starts to fall to pieces, because the foundation turned to sand, or you're climbing a ladder, and all of a sudden the ground that it's on turns to air, and it's just, you've got nothing to stand on. The whole thing collapses. Similarly, a life that denies the crucified and risen Jesus to be the son of God, who has a claim on my soul, the life that denies that is is saying God is a liar, which is to say that life causes the foundation of all meaning, of all purpose, of all beauty and reason to be turned to sand. That life is all of a sudden now built on a lie, and aimed at a lie and driven by a lie because it's saying God is a lie. God's not true.
If this testimony about Christ is not true, God's not true. If God's not true, there's no meaning. There's no purpose. There's no ground to anything. That's what you're saying if you say Christ is not my God.
The crucified one is not my Lord and master. You're not just saying I don't follow that religion. You're saying reality is meaningless. There's nothing left. So if God is a liar, which is to say if we deny Christ as king, if we deny the crucified one as the son of God, if God is a liar, then love is nothing other than a chemical process being carried out in your brain.
It doesn't mean anything. Think about what you're saying if you say God's a liar. Love means nothing. Love has no foundation in anything deeper than the chemicals in your body. So the feeling of love for your spouse or your parents or your children, it's no different than the grumbling of your stomach for hunger or thirst or a seizure.
It's no different. It's just another chemical function in the body. That's what we say if we say Christ is not the Son of God. If God is a liar, then beauty, all of beauty is nothing other than a subjective response of your neurons to a particular shape of molecules laid out there in front of you. Beauty is nothing.
Are you ready to live in a universe where beauty means nothing at all? Where a sunset and a pile of dog vomit are the same thing? Because it's just, who cares? Well, that's one thing, that's another thing, and it's nothing. You feel the foolishness of that?
That's the universe that happens when Christ is denied, because there's no ground for beauty if God's a liar. There's no foundation for beauty if God is not who he is. If God's a liar, then hope is a lie. Hope is just a biological coping mechanism built into our brains by evolution to try to get through, but it means nothing. It's not anchored to anything.
It's nothing at all. If God's a liar, then hope is a lie. The music of the birds singing in the morning means nothing at all. It's just nothing. It's no different than any other sound.
The smile of your children and the warmth it brings to your heart means nothing. There's nothing there, absolutely nothing if God's a liar, so just forget about it. Why? Look at them, look at a stone. It's the same thing.
If God's a the song that moves your heart to tears for its beauty and its sorrow and its fullness, it's nothing. It's simply nothing at all happening there. If God's a liar, then everyone and everything you've ever cherished is nothing more than molecules moving from one place to another. So that is the universe we choose if we deny the testimony of God, and so call him a liar. If we deny that the crucified Jesus is the risen King and revealer of God, then we're saying yes to that universe I just laid out.
On the other hand, to embrace Christ, to believe Christ is to bear witness God is true. There is meaning. There is purpose. Beauty does matter. Love is true.
Hope is anchored. To embrace Christ is to embrace everything as meaningful and purposeful and beautiful in him. So this is the division. This is not just about which religion am I gonna choose. This is about reality, and it comes down to what do I do with the testimony God has given concerning his son?
And of course my prayer is that all of us in this room would be believing God. Not just once when I was a kid when things seemed to make sense, I said, I believe in Jesus, but that you would be believing the testimony God has screamed in the flesh of the Son from the cross. You'd believe it. We would hang onto this and say, this is true. This is true.
This love is true. The resurrection that turns that moment to beauty is true. This is the testimony God has given and it's true. And just consider the mercy that trust is. How we have become so trained to be suspicious.
We've become so geared to need to prove, need to prove, need to make sure I distrust everyone because trust is vulnerability. Trust is putting myself out there. Right, of course it is. But what John is calling to us to, what God is calling us to, what reality is calling us to is trust. Drop.
Drop all the weight of trying to prove and just trust someone greater than yourself. Not me standing here, the one speaking in this book. Trust the testimony of God. What a mercy, what a relief, what an exhalation of soul simply to say, I believe you. I don't understand.
I can't explain. I don't know why. I believe what you've said, and to put ourself in his authority, what a mercy that is. Believe that the love displayed at the cross and vindicated by the resurrection is the truth about who God is, and so about who you are, and so about what reality is. Your reality, your situation right now is not determined by what you're feeling about it, by what it seems to be from our frail perceiving capacities.
Belief in the testimony of God means to say, right now this is true. Right now this love, this hope, this glory, this Easter morning beauty is true. Right now the King of Kings and Lord of Lords is the one who died on the cross and rose again and is reconciling all things to himself. Right now, the love, the love shown at the cross is true. And I've said this before, but the love of God in Christ is such that if we were able to taste it, to really taste it, it would quiet the most deeply grieving soul.
It is a love that can quiet the deepest horrors of this life because it's gone there. It's a love that would set the most hardened heart weeping for wonder. It is that love. Whether you feel it right now or not, whether you can conceive it right now or not, this love is the one displayed in Christ, and this love is the truth according to God's testimony. So believe it, believe it, hold onto it.
Live in the world formed by that love, not by our fears or our what ifs or anxieties. God, may it be so. Now, as we come to the end, we've seen, okay, there's two divisions. There's two directions we can go. Believing, and so having the testimony in us, or disbelieving, and so rejecting God in all things.
And now we come to verse 11 where John restates the testimony that God has given from a different perspective. Let me read it for you. Verse 11, and this is the testimony that God has given us eternal This is the testimony that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has a son has life. Whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.
So in verse nine, in verse nine where it says, This is the testimony. The testimony of God is the testimony that God has borne concerning his son. So in verse nine it says, This is the testimony of God that he has borne witness concerning his son. Okay, that's my son. That's the essential form of the testimony.
Now in verse 11, he says, This is the testimony that we have eternal life. And you might say, Well, which is the testimony? And he's coming at it, it seems from two different perspectives. Think about it like this. Imagine there's a man who gives this testimony.
I am a wealthy and generous father. Okay, that's the testimony. Now, what does that mean for his children? For his children, that very same testimony, I am a wealthy and generous father. For his children, that testimony means, I am secure and well provided for.
You see how that works? There's a testimony. The content is I'm a wealthy and generous father. But then that same testimony for this person means I'm provided for, I'm secure. So it's the same testimony, but the second part is from what's it mean for me?
What's it mean for the one to whom that's spoken? So too, in verse nine, we find God's simple testimony, which can be summarized in this way. The one who comes by water and blood on the cross is my son. Okay, that's the simple testimony. Now what does that mean for those who are believing it?
Verse 11 gives that to us. For us it means God has given us eternal life and that life is in his son. So Christian, God has sworn to you that if you are believing him, you have eternal life. You're tasting it now. You're drinking it now.
You're breathing it now, and that life is in his son. Now let wrap things up this morning by just talking a little bit about that idea of eternal life, because we mentioned this a few weeks ago, months ago now, but it's worth coming back to again, because John comes back to it here. Often when we hear eternal life, we think of the temporal aspect. It goes on and on and on. Eternal life is life forever, And that's true, eternal life doesn't end.
But when John's using this term, his emphasis does not fall on the unending aspect. His emphasis falls on the depth, on the quality, on the fullness of that life. Now you see right here in verse 11, he doesn't say this is the testimony that God will give us eternal life. He said God gave us. It's already done.
Eternal life is yours. And then again in our memory verse, John three thirty six, where it says, Whoever's believing in the Son has eternal life right now. So John's emphasis is not eternal life is coming. His emphasis is eternal life is present, and you really, you Christian, you're experiencing eternal life now, and they ask that will go on, that will continue on, but you're in it now, and the key to understanding this is that when John talks about this, his emphasis falls upon depth rather than width. His emphasis falls upon the quality rather than the quantity.
His emphasis falls on the fullness of that experience rather than the length of time of that experience. So he says, this is the witness. Christian, if you're believing Christ, you have eternal life. He's not just saying, Christian, if you're believing Christ, you won't ever die. He's saying, Christian, if you're believing Christ, you've entered into a fullness of life unlike what came before, which will in fact never end.
Now, an example that came to my mind as I was thinking about this, have any of you ever had a McRib sandwich? Thankfully I have not, but I've seen them, I've seen them. What a McRib sandwich is, is meat particle board pressed into the shape of a rack of ribs, and then you eat it. They give it to you, it's like, it looks like it's ribs, but it's not. It's just like meat paste smooshed into the shape of ribs, and then you eat it.
Okay? That's a McRib sandwich. Now think about smoked ribs, actual smoked ribs prepared by a genuine pit master covered in his own homemade barbecue sauce, and whether or not ribs are your thing, you can picture the distinction here. You got the difference. You got the meat paste crunched into the shape of ribs, and you've got the ribs that have actually been prepared and made by the pit master.
The difference between those two is one of quality, not quantity, okay? No matter how many McRib sandwiches you stack up and eat, you're never going to eat real ribs. It doesn't matter how many you have. The quality's different. The depth is different, and in a similar way, eternal life is not just more of this life forever.
It's not just more McRibs. Now you have more and more of them. It is the real thing. It's the real thing that this was an image of. It's the deep thing that this was a picture of, and just as if you're eating a McRib sandwich, and you switch to the real thing, you say, Oh, I see where they were going with it.
I see what they were trying to do with that shape. I see what they were getting at, but this is the real thing. So too to enter eternal life is to say, in this life, oh, this is what it was always about. This is what I was always after. This is what I was looking for in all that I was seeking.
This is true life, and what is that depth? What is that realness? What is that life of true life that we have in Christ? It is knowing God, and here's where I'll end today. John seventeen:three, Jesus says, This is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God.
So the difference that takes our life from the mick rib to the real ribs, or to put it in perhaps a more fitting register, from a splash pool to the ocean. The difference that brings us into the depth of life is knowing your God in Christ. Not just knowing facts about him. It's not just like, I know a lot of facts about God, so now I'm really alive. No, it's a bone deep spirit given assurance that the only true God is the one who has opened his heart to us in Christ and declared his name to us in Christ and sung his soul over us in Christ.
To live is to know this is God. This is who God is. To truly live is to have the assurance that the only true God is the one who declares his name as Jesus Christ willingly, knowingly, gracefully carries all your shame to the cross. Carries all your sin, all your pain, loss, confusion, horror, sorrow, hell, as you see your God bear it all up in himself and take it to himself, and your soul says, This is who God is. That's what it means to live.
To live means to be assured in our soul that the only true God is the one declared also in the raising up of the crucified one. As the crucified corpse is transfigured to the risen Lord, as the wounds of his agony become witnesses of love, as winter thorns of our curse blossom into the resurrection spring of hope, as the tears of the bride are turned to the wedding wine of her eternal joy. As that happens Christian, you are tasting the truth about who God is, and eternal life means knowing, knowing, knowing this one is God. And so this is the reality in which I live. This one is God, and so this is the truth in which I live.
Let this vision of God revealed, declared, proclaimed in the slain and risen Christ, let it soak our understanding of reality the way water soaks a sponge, and then let us live from it. And how do we come to this knowledge? How do we enter this? It says there at the end, this life is in his son. This life is in his son.
Everything God is is in Jesus Christ. Nothing is left out. So enter in by faith to Christ, receive the testimony of God proclaimed in Christ, and let us know our God here, and live in light of it. Let me pray for us. Father, to know you in Christ who dies and rises is life, is life, that life was made to be illumined by this light.
Life was made to be lived in this atmosphere. Life was made to be lived, Father, with your glory in Jesus set before us. And I pray that would be true for us Lord that everyone in this room would be moved to belief in your testimony. Lord, I pray that there would be none starting with me who would hear this testimony and ignore it and not believe it and turn from it or live as if it were not true, but that all of us father would believe, yes, this is your truth, this is what is true, and this is the place I will live, and in so doing, Father, we would proclaim, you are true, you are true, and we would have this witness in ourselves. May it be so, Father, for the joy of your people, for the endurance of your people, for the hope of your people, and for the glory of your name.
We ask these things in Jesus' name, Amen.
Caleb: Thank you for listening to this message from King's Tree Church in Sabina, Ohio. To see more of the beauty of God and the crucified and risen Jesus Christ, come worship with us on Sundays at 10AM or visit our website at kingstreechurch.org.