Sermon Tone Analysis

It is once again a privilege to share the Word of God with the church.

I am excited about the opportunities for ministry and outreach that we have coming down the road and for the active role our committees are taking in advancing the work of the church.

Having been here for just over a year, I am more excited today than I was when I got here.

This church is very special to me and I want to once again say thank you for the recognition during our reception last week.

If you’ve sat down and talked with me recently, you have probably heard me began to rant on the detrimental impacts of technology on our world.

With a child coming to our family very soon, I have been thinking about this more and more.

I’ve been talking to my wife about setting limits to our screen time and modeling living without being a slave to the screen.

There are still many strides I have to take in this effort, but the goal is to make the use of technology an extension of worship of God, rather than worshiping the screen itself.

This might sound weird, you might not think that we worship screens, but when I was Florida a time ago, I heard a pastor describe our phones as our pocket Gods.

We go to our phones for advice, we constantly refresh the feed to see the newest revelation.

One pastor went as far as to say that if aliens were to observe humanity from a completely outside perspective, they would assume that we worship our phones.

They are the first things we pick up in the morning, we carry them on us at all times, and they are the last things we look at at night before rolling over into bed.

We aren’t going to dwell on this topic of phone use for much longer, but I seriously implore you, especially those of you who have grown up fixated on technology, to evaluate the impact and really the hold it has on your life.

Most of us could use a “Less is more” approach to Technology.

That is what I am trying to do in my own life.

But one of the problems with divorcing your life from constant screen engagement is finding better things to fill your time with.

Amongst other things, I have decided to really try to learn piano.

It is something I can do that is productive, I can hopefully one day then teach my own child, as well as eventually learn to play songs of worship and praise.

Instead of spending my time diving through the muck of low value, online entertainment.

I can do something that will allow me to learn a skill to aid in glorifying the Lord!

What an exchange!

I am in awe every week when I hear Miss Shirley play for the church.

It will be long time, if ever, when I’ll be able to reach such abilities.

However, as I was beginning my practice this week a very interesting analogy came to me.

When it comes to piano, everything begins with and comes back to middle C. Middle C, the middle key on the piano or keyboard, is where everything start and where everything builds off of.

Now, as I progress in learning the piano, I will learn to read and play notes all over the keyboard.

But all of that growth stems from an understanding of middle C.

Why do I bring this up?

If you’ll remember, the primary purpose of the book of 1 John, the book we have been studying for eleven weeks now, is to show believer that they can KNOW that they are saved.

There is assurance in Salvation.

John has continually stressed the ideas of truth, love, and obedience, as doctrinal tests of belief.

Today we will see in our section of Scripture that these ideas, notes, if you would, combine together in the life of the believe to produce a symphony of victory that no one can take away.

Let’s begin looking at our Scripture and throughout the message we will expand upon this metaphor: The Symphony of Victory

To start I want to actually look at the bookends of these five verses, the first part of verse 1 and then verse 5.

1 John 5:1a (ESV)

Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God,

We will look at how we overcome the world a bit later, on but in these two verses we find the “Middle C” of Christian life.

Centered on the Truth of Christ

The Christian life is centered on the truth of Christ.

We read two complimentary statements that are the integral to salvation.

Jesus is the Christ and Jesus is the Son of God.

Jesus is the Christ and Jesus is the Son of God.

I said once before in this sermon series that what you believe about Jesus is the core of everything else that you believe.

The truth of the Christ is the center of the Christian belief.

It is not the only doctrine we have, but it is the root of all the other things that we believer.

We can go scaling up the metaphorical keyboard and talk about all sorts of things like eschatology and the end times, or we can hit the bass notes and talk about evangelism and our missional efforts, but everything comes back to and is centered around the truth of Jesus Christ being the Christ and the Son of God.

So what do those things mean?

What does it mean to say that Jesus is the Christ.

Christ means Messiah, Deliverer, Savior.

It literally means the Anointed One.

Now in our day and age, we don’t see a lot of anointings.

But an anointing, pouring the head with oil, would signite someone being set apart and consecrated to a duty.

When we say that Jesus is the Anointed One, the Christ, we are saying that He was anointed as Prophet, Priest, and King of the Church.

Spurgeon provided an extensive list of questions to test if you truly believe that Jesus is the Christ:

Ask yourself “Do I this day believe that Jesus is the great Prophet anointed of God to reveal to me the way of salvation?

Do I accept Him as Teacher and admit that He has the Words of eternal life?… Do I accept Him to be, from now on, the Revealer of God to my soul, the Messenger of the Covenant, the Anointed Prophet of the Most High?…Do

I firmly believe that Jesus was ordained to offer His one sacrifice for the sins of mankind, by the offering of which sacrifice, once and for all, He has finished atonement and made complete expiation?…Is

Jesus, who is now exalted in Heaven, who once bled on the cross, is He king to me?

Is His law my law?

Do I desire entirely to submit myself to His government?”

He then said, “My dear Friend, if you can heartily and earnestly say, “I accept Jesus Christ of Nazareth to be Prophet, Priest, and King to me because God has anointed Him to exercise those three offices…then, dear Friend, you have the faith of God’s elect, for it is written, ‘He that believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God.’”

We must believe that Jesus is the Prophet, Priest, and King who proclaims truth, sacrificed for us, and now governs our life.

And that understanding of Jesus as Christ pairs with the understanding of what it says in verse 5, Jesus is the Son of God.

No mere man could the Prophet, Priest, King, that Christ is.

We see people fulfilling some of those roles all throughout Scripture, but never complete enough to provide eternal atonement.

No mere man was capable, but the God man, Jesus Christ, fully God and fully man, did what mere could not.

We are truly saved, born again, when we truly understand and believe that Jesus is the Christ and Jesus is the Son of God.

We cannot think Christ is “less than” anything that He is.

Were those who said Jesus was just John the Baptist right?

Nope.

What about one of the prophets?

Nope.

But when Peter confessed that Jesus is the Christ and the Son of the living of God, Jesus says right on!

You get it!

And it wasn’t by your own understanding that you understood this, but by the Father.

Jesus would go on to say that this confession is the foundation of the church.

True believers are united in the truthful confession of Jesus as the Christ and Son of God.

Just like we see in our text from 1 John.

Before we move on to the next verses I want to go back to the first part of verse one.

1 John 5:1a (ESV)

Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God,

There is a subtle truth in this statement that we could look over, but as I was reading through commentaries, one of them pointed out the tense of the verbs and it shines a bright spotlight on the security of our salvation.

The verb “believes” Is in an ongoing, present tense.

The verb “has been born” is in the perfect sense.

This shows us that continuing belief is the mark of someone who has already been born again.

You cannot be unborn.

I know its Halloween and people there’s a bunch of movies about the undead, but that's all a bunch of hogwash.

The one who is born cannot be unborn.

Our continual persistant belief in Jesus as the Christ is evidence that we have been born again.

“Adrian Rogers said it well: “The assurance of my salvation comes not from the fact that I did trust Christ but that I am trusting Christ for my salvation” (Adrianisms, 186).

And what must we believe?

We must believe “that Jesus is the Messiah.””

Jesus is the Christ and the Son of God.

This is the central truth to being being born again.

It is the “middle C” the life of the Christian is built upon.

Let’s look at the rest of verse 1.

When Christ is central point of your life and you have been born again, love gives the rest of life harmony.

Harmony in Love

Last week, we placed gave a long look at the Love of God.

We saw that believers love because Christ first loved us.