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God’s Testimony

God’s Testimony

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It is God’s argument, based on the facts of history and the confirming work of the Holy Spirit, that faith in Jesus Christ alone secures for us eternal life. Well, it’s good to be back with you, church. My family and I had a wonderful time away in Michigan over the last few weeks. I had an opportunity to teach middle school kids for a week at camp. So that was interesting. That was fun. Our kids had a chance to serve at camp, which was fun. They taught handcrafts and washed dishes and things like that. We parasailed for the first time. I don’t know if you’ve ever done that before, but that weird. It was fun. If you’ve never done that, it looks terrifying, but it’s actually quite peaceful up there. We just had a good time all around. Except for the part where my son for the second vacation in a row got us all sick again. He got sick, and then we all got sick. So if you if you see him, look at him disapprovingly for me. I appreciate that. Yeah. I want to thank our preaching team for doing such a great job faithfully walking us through the verses of First John. Didn’t they do a good job? They did a great job. Some of these guys were handed two verses to preach. Two verses. When your passage is small, it’s very easy to launch off into all sorts of different directions and not stay focused on what John is teaching in those two verses. But they did a fantastic job showing us exactly what John wants to teach us from his letter with his apostolic authority. But those guys sure am glad that I’m back, because my return this morning coincides with what is, without a doubt, the oddest and most difficult passage to interpret in this entire letter. I would even put it in the top 20 weirdest passages in the Bible. It’s one of those passages that when you come to it in your private reading time at home, you just immediately look to the study notes at the bottom. You don’t even think about it for a second. You’re just like, what does that say? What are they saying that says right. But not to worry. With some careful reading and some cross-referencing and even some process of elimination, we can get a pretty good idea of what John means in this passage. And really, the tough part is only a small portion of a larger passage that is clear and it’s profound, and it’s encouraging for the believer. And it’s challenging. It’s an offer to the non-believer. This sermon will be a bit more complex than the average week here at Calvary. So settle in because this morning God puts forward his argument for why you should trust in Jesus. And if you already trust in Jesus, why your trust and your confidence is secure. You know, I love listening to people make an argument for what they believe. Let me be clear. I do not like arguing. Okay. I love hearing arguments. There’s a big difference between those two things. We use the word arguing for fighting, right? We use those interchangeably. So what the Bible calls quarreling, getting heated, yelling, things like that. That is a product of sinful anger. That is not what I’m talking about. An argument is a defense of a position based on evidence. Think about a courtroom where a lawyer presents a closing argument, right? It’s a set of facts laid out in an orderly way to try to persuade. And I appreciate it very much when someone lays out the reasons and facts that serve as the foundation for what he or she believes. I want to know what you believe, but I also want to know why you believe it. And everything has an argument. Everything. Everything you can think of right now has an argument behind it. Everything from your philosophy for life, right down to your preferred way to barbecue has an argument behind it. And the more important the belief is, the more sound the argument must be. The importance of our topic today cannot be overstated. It’s literally life and death, or more precisely, eternal life and eternal death. It’s an argument that eternal life can be acquired exclusively through Jesus Christ. The facts in support of this argument are the ministry of Jesus Himself, and the internal witness of the Holy Spirit, and the one making his argument today is God. In our passage today, John is going to lay out what he calls the testimony of God. It’s God’s argument based on the facts of history and the confirming work of the Holy Spirit, that faith in Jesus Christ alone secures for us eternal life. Now, it might seem odd to you that God would argue for his position. You say, why? Why would God have to make a case for his position? But consider this. God has made us, and he has made us reasonable creatures, hasn’t he? He’s given us a brain that is capable of thinking through facts and weighing arguments and coming to conclusions. So it’s not really surprising at all that in a sinful world that’s full of misleading ideas and temptations and bad arguments, that God’s gospel, his good news would come to us with external facts and internal ...
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