Three Witnesses of Jesus (1 John 5:6-5:12)

Good morning, everyone. Hope everybody's doing well this morning. If you'll find your seats, we'll get going this morning. Good to see everybody. We're going to be in the book of 1 John 5 this morning, so if you'll find your place there, we'll start off with a word of prayer and then we'll jump into God's Word.

Father, we just thank you for everything that you do in our lives, for the fact that you've provided a Savior for us. That wasn't just a man, he was a God incarnate, and that he paid the price, the penalty for our sins, and that by believing in him, we can have everlasting life.

What a gift that you've given us, and I just pray this morning that you'll go before us and you'll help us to have our hearts open to the truth of your Word, that it would impact us in a way that it would cause us to be conformed to your image more and more every day.

Help us to love you, Lord, every day, just in a deeper, more sincere way. Help us to share our faith with everyone out there. The times seem to be difficult and challenging, and people need to hear the truth.

They need to understand that you are the only way that there is to heaven, and that you love us and you care for us. We just commit our time to you this morning, Lord, and just thank you that you love us in Jesus' name, amen.

The Division Between the Children of God and the Children of the Devil

We've been in this book for quite some time, and we've been talking about the false teaching and the division that has entered the church in Asia Minor. There's that division that's been happening between the children of God and the children of the devil.

You can see it in the passages that we've been talking about. These apostates have introduced false doctrine into the church, and it's a challenge to identify who is and who isn't a believer of God. This is some of the things we've been talking about in the book of 1 John, is just being able to understand who's a believer and who isn't.

And we've seen that the division comes through the father of lies, the devil. That was in 1 John 3, verse 8. And there's good and there's evil in this world. There is right and there is wrong. There is truth and there are lies.

And it's good to know the reason why we have that division. It's good to know that the reason they exist is because the serpent of old, the devil. This is the reason why we have this constant struggle and constant battle in the church and in our relationships.

When the serpent came into the picture and deceived Eve, it created this thing called.

Sin.

You may have heard of it. You may have heard of it. The fall of man into sin started a perpetual war, didn't it? Between good and evil, between good and evil. God made it clear to Eve, to Adam, and to the serpent that there's going to be consequences for that sin.

And to the woman, he said, you're going to have multiplied pain in childbirth and that her husband would rule over her. It's one of the consequences. To the man, it was that his work would become difficult.

Anybody that works knows that it's a challenge. You understand that it's difficult. And that's proof that this consequence of sin has come to pass and that death is going to be our end. From the dust he came and to the dust he will return.

To the serpent, God said this, because you have done this, cursed are you more than any of the cattle and more than every beast of the field. On your belly you will go and dust you will eat all the days of your life.

It's not all that God told us about the consequences of sin though. He mentioned that he's going to put enmity between you and the woman and between your seed and her seed, he shall bruise you on the head and you shall bruise him on the heel.

God put enmity between the serpent and the woman. This is the reason why we have division. This is the reason why you can look into this book of 1 John and understand the vast struggle we have with the apostates in the church.

Identifying children of God and children of the devil. It's because this enmity is a deep rooted hatred. It is a hostility and a constant friction between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman.

It's a constant friction between us, between the children of God and the children of the.

Devil.

And it's seen in this book and it's seen in our everyday relationships. We can see it between a believing father and an unbelieving son. We can see it between a believing brother and an unbelieving sister.

And it's because God put that division between the children of God and the children of the devil because of the rebellion of Satan and the sin of Eve. And what John's been trying to get across here in this book is that the emphasis is on Christ.

The only way to really solve that and deal with some of this conflict is through repenting of your sin and believing in Him. And the churches in Asia Minor and all the churches down throughout history have this challenge, don't they?

They face it to understand how to live with this known enmity, this known conflict between the children of God and the children of the devil. How do we do that? And how do we keep the church pure from evil?

And how do they live side by side with those that hate the Lord? The parable of the wheat and tares in Matthew 13 makes it clear that living side by side with unbelievers is challenging because it isn't always apparent that the people you are associating with are of the devil.

You don't always know that. Tares, you see, look like wheat when they are young. And eventually though, when they grow up, they manifest themselves and you can tell just exactly where they come from. They start off that way, but God eventually proves them to be children of the devil because they deny the Lord Jesus.

This is how it happens. And the tares among the wheat is because of what happened in the garden. And I think when you see the snake, any snake, which I hate snakes, by the way, when you see one, it should be a reminder to you of the fall and the reason why we have this conflict.

In the world.

When you see them slithering along, you can be sure to remember that there is hatred in this world. And why that hatred exists and why the children of God and the children of the devil are at odds with each other.

It puts life into perspective, knowing the reason why there is so much struggle. This is the point of 1 John addressing the false teaching and illustrating clearly how you can know who are the tares among you.

The only way to know true from false, right from wrong, is by having a right relationship with our precious Lord. You understand who he is. You understand what the truth is. So when you see something that is false, it's clearly evident because if there's no evidence of a relationship with him, then you can be sure that you are among the tares.

There has to be proof of salvation in someone's life. And there's only hope and victory in Christ. And right from the very beginning in Genesis, we can read the hope that was there, commonly called the Proto-Evangelium.

In Genesis 3, verse 15, proto means beginning and evangelium is good news. So in Genesis 3, verse 15, we have the first gospel message presented, and that's seen in the Bible, when God said, he shall bruise you, he, God, shall bruise you, the serpent on the head, and you, the serpent, shall bruise him, Christ, on the heel.

See, just after the fall, God set out the consequences for sin, and he provides hope that one day Jesus is going to come and he's going to right the ship. So it's one thing to know about the conflict, but there's also the hope that there is a way to overcome that.

And that's a lot of what 1 John is about, placing that emphasis on Christ and who he is. You want to know how the story ends? Here it is. God will bruise, and that word means crush. God will crush the head of Satan.

He deals the final blow to the serpent at the cross, and then forever he will be banished, as we can read in Revelation 20, verse 10, and the devil who deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are also, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.

See, all the devil can do is bruise the heel of Jesus. What can he do to Christ? Not much. He can strike at Christ, cause him to suffer a little, but he can never destroy him. And that's our hope. Jesus is the victor, and it's the hope John instills into the believers in this book.

And that's why 1 John is one of the most important books ever written, because it clearly delineates the apostates from the true believers in Jesus. The emphasis is on the one who crushes the head of Satan.

The Three Witnesses: Spirit, Water, and Blood

That's where we're at in this book right now. And so we're going to read our passage for today in 1 John 5, verses 6 through 12. Let's turn there and read that real quick. This is the one who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ.

Not with the water only, but with the water and the blood. It is the Spirit who bears witness, because the Spirit is the truth. For there are three that bear witness, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood, and the three are in agreement.

If we receive the witness of man, the witness of God is greater. For the witness of God is this, that he has borne witness about his Son. The one who believes in the Son of God has this witness in himself.

The one who does not believe God has made him a liar, because he has not believed in the witness which God has borne witness about his Son. And the witness is this, that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.

He who has the Son has the life. He who does not have the Son of God does not have life. So in verses six through eight, we're going to kind of lump those together. Jesus provides more evidence of the deity of Christ.

He says, the one who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ. This is the one who crushes the head of Satan, is the one who came by water and blood. But what does that mean? He came by water and blood. What does that mean?

That's kind of curious, isn't it? How is that an evidence for the deity of Christ? Well, there's a number of views that people have about this, and I'll just list out three different views about the meaning of these.

Water and blood. Some people think it means, refers to two sacraments of the baptism and the Lord's Supper. So the water, of course, stands for the baptism. And in this view, the blood is only symbolical.

Symbolical. But here's the reality. Blood's never used to represent a sacrament and communion. So I don't really hold that view in high regard. The second one I would say is, water and blood refer to the wounds in Jesus' side.

Everybody always seems to, you know, spear went in the side of Jesus and water and blood came out. You know, that's kind of how they look at that and say, that's got to be the meaning of water and blood in this verse.

And it sounds plausible, but it doesn't really answer the question in our verse, though, of why Jesus came by water and blood. It doesn't answer that. And I would say the last one is probably the most widely accepted view, is that the water and the blood refer to the ministry of Jesus.

First to the ministry of Christ. So the water for when he was baptized in the Jordan, kind of inaugurating the beginning of his ministry, if you will. His baptism identified him publicly with sinners.

And so the blood when he went to the cross. So you have that encapsulating life of Christ. So the water and the blood represent that. And the two terms really sum up the ministry of Christ. And I would say that's an accurate view there.

And notice that John says in these verses, not with the water only. See that? What would it mean if Jesus came by water only and not by blood and water? What's the significance of that comment? It's significant in this situation because the Gnostics taught that he came by water and not by blood.

This is the distortion that they were bringing into the churches in Asia Minor. And it was the teaching of Corinthians who was an early Gnostic. He taught that Jesus came as a man, but then he became God at his baptism.

Came God at his baptism when the Holy Spirit descended on him. But then just before Christ went to the cross, the Spirit left him. That's the teaching. That way only the earthly Jesus died, but not the divine Jesus.

See, that's Gnosticism because they believed that the physical body was evil. And so they didn't really embrace the fact that Christ was God incarnate, that he went to the cross, that he died, that he rose again.

And so this was a way around that. And you see some of this form of teaching is still around. You see it in the NAR, Apostolic New Reformation. Bill Johnson in Redding, California teaches this form of this kind of teaching.

He, I'll quote him in this paragraph. He says, Bill Johnson, While Jesus is eternally God, he emptied himself of his divinity and became a man. And then he says this, It's vital to note that he did all of his miracles as a man, not as God.

If he did them as God, I would still be impressed. Good for you. I would still be impressed, but because he did them as a man, yielded to God, I am now unsatisfied with my life. Being compelled to follow the example he has given us, Jesus is the only model for us to follow.

See, that's a wrong view. You can't say Jesus was just a man and he was influenced by God and following God because this is what we do. We love Jesus. We're not God, but he is. He was not a man yielded to God.

He was God in human flesh. He rose from the dead, right? Proving that he truly was the son of God. And this is the whole point of this book. A lot of it is just over and over again. John makes this circular argument.

Keep coming back to Jesus and who he is. Who do you say that he is? And he provides these evidences all along the way to say that pay attention. Don't let people distort the truth of who he really is because so many just come to him and say, Hey, he's a good guy.

He had good teaching. You know, he's a prophet. But the reality of it is, is all of our faith hinges on the fact that he is the God man. It all hinges on it because if that's not true, then what are we doing here?

Don't really have a reason to be here. And the reason why we know this is true is because in these verses six through eight, it says there are three that bear witness, the water, the blood, and then also the spirit.

So the Holy Spirit is testifying to the truth of who Jesus is. And it's the reason we know it's true because of the spirit. Spirit is first in the list because he testifies to the other two, right? The water and the blood.

How can water and blood testify though, along with the spirit? Two of the three are inanimate objects. How do they testify to anything? Because the water and the blood point to something else, don't they?

They point to a place and a time, the same way that the blood of Abel still witnesses to us though he is dead. You could plant a tree in your yard to remember somebody, all the memories, so that every time you look at that tree, you would think of all the amazing things that you did with that person.

This is the idea. The tree testifies to something else, the same way the blood and the water testify to something else. They testify to the magnificence and the ministry of Christ and who he is. And both of these things speak to the totality of his ministry.

He wasn't just a man and then became God at his baptism. No, he was God throughout his entire life. And prior to that, he's always been God. He existed with God in the beginning and beyond. There was no need for John to be baptized though, or for Christ to be baptized because he had no sin.

John the Baptist, remember, tried to prevent him from doing this. He said, no, Christ, you need to baptize me. And Christ said, no, I need to be baptized by you. It was a way for Christ to identify with sinners.

And here's the reality of it. It proves that he wasn't just a human because at the baptism in Luke 3 .22, the Holy Spirit descending on him and the voice of God saying, you are my beloved son and you, I am well pleased.

The baptism testifies to something greater, that he is God, that he was sent by God. Holy Spirit descended on him. You see the Trinity in that very essence. The blood testifies to something else. What is it?

The atoning work of Christ. You see how he went to the cross. He died for our sins. He paid the penalty for us so that the wrath of God wouldn't come upon you and I. And so the baptism in the blood you see speak to something greater, the ministry of Christ and what that means.

And the blood speaks of the atoning work. You see that in Matthew 27 .54. Now the centurion and those who are with him keeping guard over Jesus, when they saw the earthquake and the things that were happening, became very frightened and said, truly, this was God's son.

That's really what it's about. Truly, this was God's son. Death, resurrection. The spirit testifies to the birth of Jesus. We see that in Matthew 1 .20. Do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife for the one who has been conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit.

The baptism of Jesus, the spirit testifies, excuse me, to the baptism of Jesus. As I mentioned in Luke 3 .22, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. The spirit testifies to the teaching of Jesus for the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.

John 6 .33. And the ministry of Jesus is something else. The spirit testifies to in Luke 4 .18, the spirit of the Lord is upon me because he anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind to set those who are oppressed.

Can there be any doubt honestly about these witnesses? I mean, that all three witnesses are in full agreement. They're all in agreement. The spirit, the water, and the blood, they're all saying the same thing.

You have to agree with all three because if you take any one of them out of the equation, he cannot be God. You can't take any of them out. They're all connected. Anyone that loves Jesus is going to give their hearty amen to that, aren't they?

They're going to say, yes, that's true. And they will understand that his spirit, God himself testifies that it is true. You see that in John 15 .26, when the advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the father, the spirit of truth who proceeds from the father, he will bear witness of me.

The Witness of God and the Gift of Eternal Life

That's kind of important. And we're going to see that in verse nine, because in verse nine, it says, if we receive the witness of man, the witness of God is greater. For the witness of God is this, that he is born witness about his son.

What does this verse mean? It means that the testimony about Jesus is something that is often accepted by men. You have people preaching the word of God all over America this morning, and they accept that.

And here's the point. If you believe man's testimony, then how much more will you believe the testimony of God himself? If you hear from man, which is common, and you listen and you understand and you believe, how much more of Christ himself comes and testifies to this truth?

I'd say it's a million times greater. This verse nine is most likely referring to John the Baptist. Matthew 5 .36 says, but the witness I have is greater than the witness of John. For the works which the father has given me to finish, the very works that I do bear witness about me that the father has sent me.

How can anyone reject the testimony about Jesus when God himself is testifying to it is the whole point. And what is he testifying to in this passage? What is he testifying to? That the son is born of him and that he is more than a man.

Spirit, the water and the blood testifying to that truth. One more evidence that Jesus is who he said he was. John uses the perfect tense here. He has given, which means continually witnesses. God continually witnesses about his son.

How does he do that? He witnesses through his word and through the Holy Spirit that lives inside of us. He witnesses every day, continually, constantly that we might know who he is because there are true and false converts in this world.

And in verse 10, the one who believes the son of God has this witness where in himself, the one who does not believe God has made him a liar because he has not believed in the witness which God has borne witness about his son.

If you believe in the son of God, then you have this witness in you. The Holy Spirit living inside of you. There are authentic believers. They give a hearty amen to all these. The spirit, the water and the blood lives in you.

The Holy Spirit. Believers believe in the son of God. They recognize that Jesus is the core of Christianity. Without him, there's no Christianity. This is the point of chapter five so far. Verse one, whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God.

If you love the father, then you love the child born of him. Chapter five, verse one. And then in verse five of the same chapter, who overcomes the world? The one who believes that Jesus is the son of God.

So, man, I don't know how many more times John can say this. That you got to place your faith in Jesus. And that's what authentic believers have their hope in is Christ. But then in the same verse, in verse 10, there's unbelievers.

There are, I would say, three kinds of unbelievers. They are the ones who reject God. They reject God because they have failed to believe the testimony that God has given about his son. They've rejected the witnesses of the water, the spirit, and the baptism.

They go their own way. So the three kinds of believers are first, those living in ignorance. They have no idea about Jesus. They don't understand and they need help. They're kind of like a blank slate in a way.

They don't really know anything about the truth or about the Bible. There's an open door there potentially to share the gospel with them. And then the second is that there are those considering it. We have people maybe listening and in this building that listen to it.

And, and they're carefully considering it. They, they haven't really been saved at this point, but they're not hostile towards it. And then there are those that have deliberate unbelief. You see that with the apostates in this book of first John, there's a deliberate willful unbelief in them and they know what they're doing.

False teachers are said to be deceiving and being deceived. That's in 2 Timothy 3 .13. They're going to be held accountable. Those that know that sit in churches all over the place, they hear the gospel preached and they know that it's true, but there's a willful rebellion against it.

And they, they walk away from it. They will need to take full responsibility for their rejection of the testimony given to them about the proof that Jesus Christ is God in the flesh. They will be held accountable on judgment day for hearing the testimony of Jesus and just looking the other way.

It's an intentional rejection. It's when they have put a lot of thought into their decisions. They've considered it. How many people have listened to messages like this and then walked out of church and never really acted upon it?

Intentional rejection is a denial that the father and the son are the same. The savior of the world is their rejection. Jesus told Philip in John 14 .9, he who has seen me has seen the father. We've got to get this right.

We've got to get this right. You cannot say that you love God, but hate his son. This is what the apostates did. You say, oh yeah, I love God. How many people just talk about God? The new age religion is all about God.

But when it comes to the deity of Christ, they fall far short. If you deny God and hate, if you love God and hate his son, effectually you've rejected God's testimony about who he is. Because the spirit inside of us confirms it.

I think this is important because when you think about our book and a number of times we've talked about eternal life in this book, those that have the son, you know, they have this eternal life living inside of them.

And in verses 11 and 12, John again talks about this eternal life. Look at verse 11. And the witness is this, that God has given, or God gave us eternal life. And this life is in his son. He who has the son has the life.

He who does not have the son of God does not have life. The us in that verse is a first person pronoun. So John is addressing the believers here. He says that us, so, and the witness is this, that God gave us, the believers, eternal life.

When does a person receive eternal life? How do you get it? I think everyone knows, right? So when you accept the Lord Jesus Christ, when he comes to live inside of you, eternal life lives inside of you.

John 17, three says, and this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God in Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. I mean, I don't know how like apostates can sit in church and hear these things, knowing that they don't have eternal life because they've rejected the father and the son.

It's hard for me to understand that level of rebellion, but eternal life comes by knowing Jesus Christ. First John one, one, two, we, in our book that we have here, it says, and the life was manifested and we have seen and bear witness and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the father and was manifested to us.

That's first John one, two, the life was manifested and we have seen and bear witness and proclaim to you the eternal life. Jesus is the eternal life. He gives it to us when we accept him as Lord and savior, and he saves us.

You want eternal life? Then heed John's words in John 3, 36. He who believes in the son has eternal life, but he who does not obey the son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him. So there's eternal life for the believer.

It's a life without end in the presence of a loving and a kind God. We're going to be with him in the new Jerusalem, the city that we're looking for. That's coming in the millennial reign of Christ. We'll be looking for that.

And it also means that even right now, we possess a new quality of life, don't we? There's peace in your life. Hopefully when there used to be turmoil, there's joy that was replaced by, there's joy that replaced sorrow.

You have confidence instead of doubt now because of the words that are in you. When you know where you're going, you shouldn't have any fear of that. What I see in the world, people that don't know Jesus as they struggle, they have all these challenges in their lives, anxiety and fear and a million other situations.

But for the faithful, the believers, knowing that we have eternal life and our destiny is sure, hopefully that brings you a sense of peace and calm that you didn't have as an unbeliever. Because an unbeliever does not have eternal life.

And we read in John 3 .36, unbelievers who reject Jesus says this about them, the wrath of God abides on him. The wrath of God abides on him. And in 1 John 3 .14, it says this, the one who does not love abides in death.

Hmm.

So how can anyone sit in church and hear these kinds of truths and then just walk away knowing that on one side, you have eternal life. You're going to be with a kind God for eternity. And on the other side, the wrath of God abiding on you.

It's hard for me to understand this other than the fact that men suppress the truth and unrighteousness. They hold it down. They don't want to believe it. And that's a willful rejection of the truth of God.

Responding to God's Testimony with Faith or Rebellion

So just in kind of summary here, all the division and conflict we see can be traced back to the sin of Adam and Eve. God said that the consequences of sin are that there will be a continual struggle in this life.

We see that, right? All kinds of struggle. It's turmoil. There's everything that we can see because men hate God and they hate those that love God. That's the struggle. But the beauty of it all is that God has provided a way.

He didn't just leave us abandoned, right? Left to our own devices. I mean, he provided a way for us. And man's response to a holy God can come in two different ways. Either you can harden your heart. You can either bristle at God and question him as to why he does what he does.

You know, you hear this a lot. Does man have a right to question the God who created them? I always come back to that. If you're one of those, then you might look back at Job 38, where it says, who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?

God speaking there. Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Can you raise your voice up to the clouds so that an abundance of water will cover you?

Basically saying, can you make it rain? How do we question the goodness and the kindness of God? We don't really have a right to do that. We have to look from it at the other kind of a heart, not the hardened heart, but the humble heart, the humble heart that says, and runs into the arms of Jesus and are comforted with all of their afflictions.

It's really quite simple. Acts 16, 31 says, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved, you and your.

House.

It's not really that complicated. Men make it complicated because they question so many things. Do you have a believing spirit or a questioning spirit? To question Jesus is to say to the potter, why did you make me?

Why did you make me? The vessel has no right to question the maker. We rest in him because he is the God of the universe. We are comforted through the words of scripture. And we, we rely on that. We don't know what's best for our own selves.

We'd like to think we do. We always think I'm going to do this because I think it's best. And then it never happens because God's got another plan because he knows what's truly best for us. The questioning spirit receives what?

They receive hell as their reward. Matthew 13, the wheat and the tares, these are the ones who have a questioning spirit. They will be bound together in bundles to be burned up in the fires of hell. They will be removed from the kingdom because they're stumbling blocks.

And those who commit lawlessness, they will be thrown into the fiery furnace. And there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Fire has to be the most horrible way to go. And fire is the imagery of eternal hell.

It speaks of the terrible and everlasting doom of the unrighteous, the sons of Satan. It's used again and again in scripture. We see that over and over again. But then there's those that love Jesus. Jesus says, gather the wheat into my barn.

That is all those that belong to him. Everyone who loves him and puts their faith in him will be gathered into his barn. The righteous will shine forth as the son and the kingdom of their father. Eternity with a loving God, a kind God is yours forever.

So as you sit here, do you have a hardened heart that rejects him and says, I don't really need that? Or do you have a humble heart that submits to his authority and his rule in your life and that you're not questioning whether he's a good and a kind God?

I hope you can say that you have a humble heart. Because if you don't, you can see that the wrath of God is going to abide on you for all of eternity. That your only destiny is a fiery hell. And I don't know why anybody would want that in their lives.

So I would just pray that today, don't wait to seek Jesus. There's men here, seek out the elders, seek out Jim. There's many people that can talk to you about what it means to have faith and trust in Jesus.

And I really pray that you won't wait. That you'll go after him with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and all your strength. And that you'll put your full trust in him because there's just no other way.