Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

Good morning brothers and sisters, Lafayette Baptist Family.

As always it is a joy to see you all and worship with you all today.

Our text today will be from 1st John, 1st John 5:6-12, if you will all please go ahead and turn there in your bibles.

While you are doing that, I want you to imagine a fisherman in a boat.

It’s an average sized boat, nothing too grand about it.

The fisherman, as fishermen often are, was not alone in the boat and had other people with him.

Imagine after a long day and a long night, and the fisherman sees something odd in the distance.

He looks out, at first it seemed very far away but it was coming straight towards him.

Still looking, still in shock, the fisherman quickly goes from confused to frightened.

Whatever it was, it was coming straight at Him.

This fisherman supposed it be a ghost, but soon saw what he thought would be impossible.

He saw someone he knew well, the Lord Jesus walking towards him.

“What is this!?”

He must have thought, how can He do this impossible thing, walking on water.

Peter cries out to Jesus, tell me to come out to You! Peter wanted to see His Lord and walk on the water as well.

He did, he walked on the water, His faith moved Him to a great and impossible act.

He then was scared by something else and sank but Jesus grabbed Him and saved Him; oh Peter, you get so much right and so much wrong.

This seems impossible, doesn’t it?

Not just to walk on the water, but the fact that Jesus would save someone who did something wrong, in this case losing faith (as all of us do sometimes).

None the less, we serve a God who is in the business of making the impossible possible.

We see this repeatedly in the testimonies of The Bible and the testimonies of our lives, this brings us to today’s sermon title and main idea that, God’s testimonies are true.

Scripture

If you will all please rise, for the reading of God’s word together today.

The scripture will be on the screen, please read along out loud with me.

Then when I am done, I will say, “this is the word of The Lord,” if you will all please respond with, “thanks be to God.” Before we do that though, let’s pray.

Father God, you are true.

You are truth, God everything in You and about You is true.

Help us understand You and your truth better, help us to put anything aside in our lives that isn’t true about You.

Father, we are helpless if not for you.

We live in a world that You have said is against us because they are against You.

Fortify us, in You word.

Help us and refine us to be all that You want us to be, help us to seek your will in all things that we do.

As You do this, which we know you will, we ask that we are motivated and mobilized to Go out and do your will, to love You and Love people.

Strengthen our love and make us understand yours.

Take this, and make it make us move into our cities, our communities, our world so that more would come to know you, your kingdom would be furthered, and You would be glorified.

It's in these things that we ask and In Jesus Christ’s Holy and precious name that I pray.

Amen.

1st John 5, starting in verse 6. 6 This is he who came by water and blood—Jesus Christ; not by the water only but by the water and the blood.

And the Spirit is the one who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth.

7 For there are three that testify: 8 the Spirit and the water and the blood; and these three agree.

9 If we receive the testimony of men, the testimony of God is greater, for this is the testimony of God that he has borne concerning his Son. 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 in the testimony that God has borne concerning his Son.

11 And this is the testimony, that God gave 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.

This is the Word of The Lord (thanks be to God), thank you, please be seated.

Context

This week we are picking back up where we left off in our journey through 1st John together.

Now, I know it’s been a little while, so let’s revisit some of the ideas we looked at in the beginning of this chapter.

In the beginning, John spoke a lot about God’s presence with us.

First, we looked at the idea that being God born means that you believe.

That is, you must believe that Christ himself is God, there is no other way than this.

If you have everything (but) this crucial point, then unfortunately you are not among the redeemed and are not living in God’s love.

Secondly, we understood that as children of God, we have certain things that we must obey.

The chief of these are to love God and love people, as the great commandments say.

Thirdly, we talked about victory.

That is, if you are a believer/worshiper/child of God, then you will have victory.

Victory over what?

Victory over the powers of the world, the evils that lie in it.

Everyone who has been born of God overcomes this through the intervention of Jesus Christ on The Cross and our faith in Him and the assurances that He gives us.

I charge all of us to remember these things and know that God’s presence in our lives makes us overcome the world.

Hold onto that truth, no matter how hard it is, hold on.

It will see you faithfully through.

Crucially in this week’s text I want to remind you of something important that we have covered several times.

That is, that the believers that John was writing to, were enduring false and blasphemous teachings among and from other supposed “believers.”

It was everywhere and was confusing them, so John is lovingly and fatherly spelling out the truth for them to ease their confusion and help them understand who to follow.

We experience this much today; false teaching is everywhere.

I would warn each of us here, that if you want to know if a teacher is false or not, look to who they are pointing.

Are they pointing to Christ or are they pointing to themselves (or someone else who isn’t a part of the Holy Trinity).

Anyone who points to anyone other than God and says “Me or I or my” a lot, is most likely a false teacher and needs to be avoided.

Instead, follow teachers and teaching that say LOOK AT CHRIST.

So, with all of that in mind, let’s dive deep into this week’s text.

Message

Our first point is, Jesus Came to us

6 This is he who came by water and blood—Jesus Christ; not by the water only but by the water and the blood.

And the Spirit is the one who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth.

I’m not going to lie to you brothers and sisters, this week’s passage was a difficult one for me to understand.

A real stumper.

In fact, these verses were particularly hard.

So, what was stumping me?

It was the water and the blood that John mentioned here.

The question I honestly had was, “what on earth is John talking about?”

When doing study on this, I quickly found out that I wasn’t the only one in history with this same question about this text.

In fact, through history there have been 3 ways of thinking that have been largely accepted at one time or another.

Today, it is largely held (as we have easier access to more ancient documents and original manuscripts than we have in the past through both technology and modern archeology, to put it simply, to take the term “water” as a reference to the baptism of Jesus by which His public ministry was initiated (Matt.

3:13–17; Mark 1:9–11; Luke 3:21–22).

“Blood” would then refer to His death, by which His earthly work was terminated.[1]”

So, water refers to Jesus Baptism and the Blood was His death on the Cross to fulfill The Father’s Will and save us from sin.

This is another one of those teachable moments for me, where study is very important when sharing the Word of God with others and understanding the context of the text is key.

In fact, in one of my classes they gave us a little saying, “Text without context is like having no text.”

So what was the important context, well remember that this book was written as a sort of commentary on misconceptions and misinformation regarding John’s gospel.

John then goes on to say The Holy Spirit testifies of Christ as well.

In fact, John wrote of this in his gospel.

In John 1:32, “32 And John (this John was John the Baptist) bore witness: “I saw the Spirit descend from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him.

33 I myself did not know him, but he who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain, this is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’

34 And I have seen and have borne witness that this is the Son[i] of God.”

As the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth, we can trust Him.

He is pointing at Christ and saying believe in Him.

In Him is where your Faith belongs.

Christ came to us as a precious gift from God Himself, God Himself sent Himself so that we could be redeemed and washed clean.