Sermon Tone Analysis
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Prayer
Faith and the Victory of God
I want to begin today with a bit of an aside and I think you will see quickly how it applies to our text for today.
In the 1500’s there was a shift in thinking which took placed called the Enlightenment.
This period of time deeply affected the way our generation understands the Scriptures.
This period laid the foundation for the deep skepticism of our day.
In broad brush strokes, I want to sketch out two of those commitments and then their implications for today.
The Enlightenment, then, brought a particular combination of ideas that challenged the validity of the church’s confession.
The idea that (1) only human reason is necessary for human knowledge entailed (2) the idea that we can make sense of the world without God’s personal involvement.
These two commitments have laid the bedrock for a deep misunderstanding of today’s text.
These two commitments are demonic and worldly.
If human reason alone becomes the basis to ground our knowledge, then the Bible becomes ONLY a historical book.
If human reason alone is how we come to understand anything than reality is reduced to naturalism (only the created world).
If God does not have personal involvement with the world, then everything is left to the scientific method.
If God does not have personal involvement with the world, then we can just remove faith from the human experience.
If everything is determined by human reason and God does not have personal involvement, then religion’s will slowly just disappear.
But do you know what has happened since this period of history?
People have NOT become any less religious.
Now what this period of history tried to do is say that it is impossible to have faith in anything outside of the physical world.
So people would place their faith in the things they could see.
They would place them in their job.
In their family, in their careers, in science, and in anything observable.
Rather, they have become lost, confused, purposeless, and without hope.
Everyone has faith in something.
What is utterly different about a Christian?
What makes a Christian distinctively different?
How is a Christian able to overcome in a world like this?
By being born again, you are able to exercise faith in Christ, to love God and one another.
Only by faith alone, in Christ alone, will you overcome the world and its schemes.
Now in 1 John, John is coming to the end of a circular book which has given us numerous tests.
And these verses sit as a capstone which include all the tests in one brief sentence.
What is utterly different about a Christian?
Born from Above
“Grounds for the Victory”
If we were to ask John, “What is a Christian?”
I think the first thing he would tell us is they are ones who have been born from above.
1 John 5:1 (ESV)
Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God
Notice the direction of these verses.
The person who believes that Jesus is the Christ has already been born of God.
Take note of two words here in these verses, “believes” and “has been born”
The first represents an ongoing process, which is belief.
The second represents something which happened in the past and now has an abiding effect.
The person who believes has been born of God in the past and now the abiding state is one of belief.
Regeneration Proceeds Faith
1 John 5:1 (ESV)
Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God
Regeneration proceeds faith.
Now regeneration is the act of God to make a person born again.
This is FIRST an ACT of God.
Belief in Jesus is the consequence of the new birth.
Now to be clear, we can’t go around and look for a stamp on people which says, “Born again”
There isn’t a personality which characterizes people who are “born again”
We should not walk around with our “Born-Again-O-Meter” measuring who we think are actual Christians.
That’s NOT John’s intentions.
The act of God regenerating a person and believing faith generally happen simultaneously.
His intention here is to show that SALVATION is PRIMARILY an act of God.
We are NOT Christian’s because we made a decision.
We are Christians because God has changed our hearts.
To all who did receive Him, that is whose hearts were open to do so.
Not of blood.
Not of the will of the flesh.
Not of the will of man.
But of God.
Faith is the instrument, but grace is the unmerited favor of God.
Implication - Humbling Reality
This is the most humbling thing ever.
It means that there was nothing in you or me to make God love us.
There was nothing about what we have done to woo or compel Him toward us.
It means that salvation was first and foremost as work of sheer grace toward sinners.
If you are a believer, then you are first and foremost one who has been born again.
But let’s consider for a moment if John would have said...
“Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ makes himself born of God...”
Faith proceeds regeneration
This statement would be saying is that a person needs to believe in Jesus in order to be born again.
That would mean that the birth is not really from God, it’s actually from us.
Consider that Ephesians passage we just saw..
It would be like saying, by faith through grace.
Ever so slightly it begins to say, you can change.
You can do it.
You just need to have faith.
SO regeneration proceeds faith…
But there is also an object on which our faith hangs.
1 John 5:1 (ESV)
Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God,
Faith Requires an Object
Before we go any further, it is important that we get a quick definition to the word faith…
The word there for substance could just as easily be translated as “the reality” “the realization”
Another way to say it is that faith is the vehicle by which God has given to His children the means to be saved.
And that vehicle is trusting in the Son of God.
And the writer of Hebrews presents it as pretty important because…
The object of a person’s faith is critically important.
We are justified by faith alone “because we are justified by the object of faith alone, that is by the merits of Christ only, without which we can have no righteousness whatever: for we are justified for Christ’s sake.
Nothing but the merit of Christ can be our righteousness in the sight of God, either as a whole, or a part only.
We are justified only by believing, and receiving the righteousness of another, and not by our own works, or merit.”
The object of our faith is what holds us.
So we can’t have something that is flimsy holding us.
We need something which is sure and steady, and that is Christ.
It also means that those who love the Father, will love those who are born of the Father.
Again, John is clearly showing that a person who loves the brothers does so because they love God.
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