Keep sharing good news without ads.
Reading 1 John 4:13-16 to understand how the Spirit of God affirms for us the salvation that we have in Jesus Christ. Visit wwutt.com for all of our videos!
By this we know that we abide in Him and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit. When we have been convicted of our sins by the Holy Spirit of God and understand the Word of God and obey it, it is an evidence of our salvation when we understand the text.
This is when we understand the text studying God's Word to reach all the riches of full assurance in Christ. Find all our videos online at www .wutt .com as well as links to follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
Here's your teacher, Pastor Gabe Hughes.
Thank you Becky and greetings everyone. We continue our study of the book of 1 John and I wanted to share a story with you today. It has to do with a couple of the verses that we looked at yesterday. 1 John 4, verses 7 and 8.
Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. I had these two verses quoted to me yesterday.
There was a man who came into our church. He was a drifter traveling west along I -70 back to his family in Colorado. He stayed the night under an overpass last night and that overpass from the church is like three or four miles away, so he had been walking a pretty good distance.
He walked from there to the hospital and then down to the church and he came in. It had rained in Junction City yesterday and so he was soaking wet, was wearing a sweatshirt, had another couple of shirts on underneath that, jeans and tennis shoes, was soaked right down to his socks.
He was carrying a plastic bag and he handed me a piece of paper and he said he had been down to the hospital and they had written a prescription for him and was wondering if there were some funds at the church or somebody that might be able to give him some money that he could have that prescription filled.
I looked at it and I could tell it was just an antibiotic and I said, okay, well I'll take you down to the pharmacy down here and we'll get this filled for you. And he was very grateful. We went out of my truck and we're driving down the road and he said when he came into the church that he grew up Southern Baptist, he was baptized in a Baptist church.
And so I kind of used that as an icebreaker and we were talking about his faith. And as we're chatting, I said, James, that was his name, I said, James, as you're hitchhiking down the road here, how are you getting your booze?
And he was a little stunned and looked at me and he said, I haven't been drinking. And I said, well, James, yeah, you have. I can smell it on you. And he laughed and he said, it's coming out my pores, huh?
And I said, well, I know it's on your breath. And he said, he said, well, I haven't had any in about a week or so. And I said, no, James, that's you're not you're not being honest with me. I said, here's my concern, James, I'm going to take you down to the store and I'm going to get this prescription filled for you.
In the meantime, you've got some money stashed in a pocket or in your bag. And while I'm spending this money on your prescription, it's saving you that money so that you can buy some booze later. And he got real defensive and upset and he's like, no, no, I don't have a dime to my name.
I'm not asking you for money. You're not giving me any money. You're paying for this prescription, so I don't have any way of getting any booze. And I said, OK, James, let me let me ask you a question.
And he said, OK. And I said, hitchhiking is pretty dangerous. So God forbid, let's say you're going down the road and a truck just kind of drifts over off the lane a little bit, clips you and and immediately you're standing before God in heaven.
Truck kills you and you're standing before God in judgment. Is God going to let you into heaven or send you to hell? And James said, well, I believe I'm going to heaven. And I said, why is that? And he said, well, because I'm going to repent of my sins and I'm going to say, Lord, forgive me for my sins.
And the Bible says that if I ask for forgiveness, that God will give it to me and and I'll be able to get into heaven. And I said, OK, this this repentance that you're talking about here, you're talking about repenting when you get to heaven.
And he said, right, I'm going to ask Jesus for forgiveness. I said, well, the Bible says in Matthew chapter seven that a day is going to come where we're going to stand before the Lord and to some he's going to say, depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.
I never knew you. It says in Hebrews that it is appointed for a man once to die. And after that comes judgment. So if you don't repent in this life and then you stand before God, you're not going to have another opportunity.
You will be judged then and and Christ is going to cast you into hell because you did not repent in life. And he got really angry with me, got really upset. And he said, Pastor, I didn't come to you for this.
I didn't come to you to be judged by you. And and for you to look down on me like this, I I came because I wanted to have a prescription filled. And we had pulled into the parking lot of the grocery store at this time where the pharmacy was.
And he grabbed his bag and he grabbed his piece of paper and shoved it in his bag. It kind of seemed to me that he was about to just get out of the truck and just walk off. And he said, you're placing a burden on me that is too much for me to bear.
And you're asking me to be perfect. And I said, well, Jesus said Sermon on the Mount, same place where he said, depart from me, you workers of lawlessness. He said in that sermon that we are to be perfect as our heavenly father is perfect.
And he said, well, what man can do that? Nobody can do that. And I said, right, you're right. Nobody can do that. Jesus Christ died on the cross for our sins and he has given us his righteousness. So therefore, if you have truly turned from your sin and are following Jesus Christ, then you'll do the things that he did and you will not continue in the sins that you previously had done.
If you're continuing to do the same sins that you had done before and there really is no transformation in you, nothing has changed. You're sinning just like everyone else is in the world. Then your conversion experience when you prayed your prayer and you were baptized, because at one point he said to me, you know, I prayed my prayer and I was baptized.
And I know the Southern Baptists believe in once saved, always saved. And I said, the point that I'm making to you, James, is that you were never saved to begin with, because there's never been any indication or evidence that a transformation or a change has happened in your life, that the Holy Spirit of God is dwelling in you and that you are actually imitating Christ, who you say that you believe in.
And he said, and that was when he quoted to me, 1 John 4, 7 and 8. He said, and he said it by reference. He said, Beloved, let us love one another for love is from God and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.
Anyone who does not love does not know God because God is love. And I said, James, hang on now. I do love you. And that's why we're here. You're trying to tell me that because I am saying to you that you are a sinner who needs to repent, that I don't love you, but we're sitting in a parking lot where I'm about to go into this store and get your prescription filled for you.
So you can't say to me that I don't care about you. Very evidently, I do. But while your physical body is breaking down and you are sick and you need this prescription to make you healthy, what I am more concerned about is not the state of your body, but it is the state of your soul.
And right now, James, if you were to die and you were to stand before God in judgment, you would not go to heaven because you have not turned from your sins. You're still walking in worldliness and the passions of your flesh.
And the Bible says those who are drunkards will not inherit the kingdom of God. And I am saying this to you, not because I'm trying to to place a burden on you that you can't bear. Christ bears our burdens for us.
He says, come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. So you will find your rest in Christ if you truly follow him. I do not condemn you. You are already self-condemned because you are walking in your sin.
I care about you, and that is why I am telling you this, because I don't want you to die and stand before God in judgment and not receive eternal life. And James wiped tears out of his eyes and he said, I'm sorry, pastor, I'm sorry.
He said, I'm a I'm a homeless drifter and I'm just used to people looking down on me and and judging me because I'm homeless. And people will throw bottles at you when you're walking down the road and stuff like that.
And and I said, I said, James, I don't I don't envy your situation, and I'm sure it's hard. But you being rich or poor really has nothing to do with what it is that I'm telling you. I am saying words to you that I would say to anybody who comes through the doors of my church.
You are a sinner who is under the wrath of God and you need to repent and do the things that Jesus did. And repenting means you don't sin anymore. You're not chasing after the passions of your flesh, but you desire to worship God with your whole body, your whole heart, soul and mind.
John three thirty six says whoever has the sun has life, but whoever does not obey the sun shall not see life. But the wrath of God remains on him. You quoted from me. First John four, seven and eight.
First John five two says, by this we know that we love the children of God when we love God and obey his commandments. That is how you know that you are saved, James, when you are convicted in your heart to obey the things that Jesus said to do.
And so we we talked about some of those things a little bit more and I spent a little bit more time with him. We went in the grocery store, we got the prescription filled. They told us it was going to be about a half an hour.
So I took him down to Walmart. I got him some shoes and socks as I mean, he's walking around in soaking wet socks and those shoes were terrible and falling apart. So once he got those new shoes, he actually went outside and chucked the old ones in a trash can.
They weren't going to be any good to anybody anyway. Also got him a duffel bag so we didn't have to carry everything around in that plastic bag that he was carrying. We went back and got his pills. We talked a little bit more about faith, talked about some football and some other things, but always wanted to bring it back to faith because I only had this guy for a little bit of time and I wanted him to be sure how he can know that he had eternal life.
So I took him down to the truck stop that he wanted to go to so he could catch his next ride. And we prayed there together in the truck. I gave him one of my books. I actually had 40 of the most popular Bible verses and what they really mean in the truck.
It was it was one of the early drafts, too. It wasn't it wasn't the version that you can get online kind of felt crummy. I'm giving him a there was one of the early drafts of the book. But anyway, so he was real grateful for that.
And I hope that the things that we shared in the gospel that I shared with him is continuing to convict his heart and is leading him to the truth. And we prayed that there would be somebody else that would come along on his journey that would continue to share some of these things with him as well.
And so I'm praying for James, that the Lord is working on his heart and is going to lead him to the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. So that has been that's been my journey in First John, chapter four, verses seven and eight over the course of yesterday happened to be the same day that I was teaching on it in the podcast that I had somebody quote those two verses to me.
But he did come to understand that what I was saying to him was being shared in love, that I was not condemning him. I was showing him he was already self-condemned and that burden that he felt on his heart.
I said to him that that Jesus said, I'm going to send the Holy Spirit and he's going to convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment. So that feeling that you have on your heart is the Holy Spirit speaking to you and you can't ignore it.
You've got to truly know that you have sinned and you need to come before God and receive the forgiveness of Jesus Christ. It is the only way that you can know that you will be saved. And at the final judgment, you will hear from God, not depart from me, you worker of lawlessness, but enter into eternal life that has been prepared for you from the foundation of the world.
Amen. That's that's a wonderful assurance from Christ. And I am grateful to him for the word of God that has been given to me, that I can read it and understand it. And it has given me life. And so it is by this word, we must share the gospel with others so that they would turn from sin and repent and know Christ the Lord.
We come to 1 John 4, verse 13. By this, we know that we abide in him and he in us because he has given us of his spirit. And we have seen and testify that the father has sent his son to be the savior of the world.
Whoever confesses that Jesus is the son of God, God abides in him and he in God. That might be about as far as we'll get today. So verse 13, by this, we know that we abide in him and he in us because he has given us of his spirit.
So remember, once again, Jesus sent the Holy Spirit to convict us of sin and righteousness and judgment. If we've been convicted in our hearts of our sin, that is one of the ways that we can know that we have passed from death into life because we've been convicted of our sin by the Holy Spirit of God.
Peter, when he realized that he had betrayed Christ three times, just as Jesus said to Peter that he was going to do, it says that he went out and wept bitterly. And I think that is a good picture of our attitude toward our sin, that we would weep over it.
God, I don't want this sin and desire of my flesh anymore. I want the righteousness of Christ and that we would be so convicted of our sin. That is an evidence of the Holy Spirit within us that we truly have the spirit of God because we hate our sin.
We see our sin the way that God sees our sin. We loathe it. We hate it. We don't want to have anything to do with it. Take me away from this wretched man that I am who will save me from this body of death.
Praise be to Jesus Christ, our Lord. And so it is by that spirit that abides in us that we know that we abide in him and he in us. Jesus said in John 8, 31, if you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples and you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.
The word of God comes from the spirit of God, it is the Holy Spirit of God that moved in men to write down the things that God had appointed for them to write down. That's the word that we have, the Bible.
That is the very word of God. And so if we abide in this word, meaning that we live in the word, we apply these words to our life and we walk in it, we do the things that it says, it governs our every thought and decision.
And when we have sinned and we know that we have gone astray from what the word of God has told us to do, we'll be convicted of it and we'll come before God and we'll repent. And as we have had it said for us at the start of this letter, if we ask forgiveness, God is faithful and just to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
This is the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives and the work of the spirit that has given us this word that we might read it and understand it and do what it says. It is the evidence that we have the Holy Spirit dwelling within us.
By this, we know that we abide in him and he and us because he has given of he has given us of his spirit. And we have seen and testify that the father has sent his son to be the savior of the world. And I don't think what John is saying here is the same as what he said in chapter one, where he talked about how we have heard and we have seen with our eyes and we looked upon and touched it with our hands concerning the word of life.
And he's talking about the the apostolic testimony. The apostles saw Christ. They saw the miracles. They heard the words. They saw him crucified. They saw him resurrected from the grave. And this is the message of the gospel that they proclaim.
But here, when you get to chapter four, verse 14, we have seen and we testify that the father has sent his son to be the savior of the world. He's not talking about himself as an apostle. Now, he's talking about the collective.
We, all of us who are in Christ Jesus, are able to testify that the father has sent his son to be the savior of the world when we've been convicted by the Holy Spirit to believe the truth of this message.
We may not have seen with our our own eyes, but we have seen it with the mind's eye, with with the faith that we have been given, that we might hear and believe. And so we now testify, all of us testify, you as a believer in Christ testify that the father has sent his son to be the savior of the world.
I testified that to James yesterday. I testify it to my church every Sunday that I stand in the pulpit and proclaim the gospel. And what a privilege that is, that God would call me to do that. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the son of God, God abides in him and he in God.
Now, just as we talked about this last week, that doesn't mean that just as long as a person confesses that Jesus is the son of God, you know, they say it, Jesus is the son of God. That doesn't automatically mean that God abides in him and he in God, because as we as we were looking at this last week, the start of chapter four, you have to confess the right Jesus, a Mormon or a Jehovah's Witness.
When they confess Jesus, they're confessing a Jesus that they made up. It's a Jesus that is different than the Christ that we read about in the Bible. And so it's confessing the right Christ, the historic biblical Christ that we read about here in the pages of scripture.
Whoever confesses that Jesus is the son of God, God abides in him and he in God. And understand when we say son of God, that is synonymous with saying that Jesus is God. To call him the son of God is no less than calling him God himself.
And so those who will use that term son of God to apply that he was just a man of God just did the things that were godly things. And we can do those things, too, and be just as much a son or a daughter of God as he was.
And that's that's not the way that term is to be applied to call Jesus the son of God is to call him God. And you confess that he is God who took on flesh to dwell among us. He lived the perfect life that we epically failed at living.
We could not live the perfect life. He died the death that we were supposed to die. He rose again from the grave, showing that he had the power over death itself so that all who follow Jesus Christ have been baptized into his death and risen into his life.
We've received his life, eternal life given from God, the father, through his son, Jesus Christ, who is God. And to confess him as the son of God is to know Jesus as God who has shown his love for us by dying on the cross for our sins.
Once again, what we read yesterday, 1 John 4, 10, in this is love, not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins. So if we confess that Jesus is the son of God and God abides in us and we in God, let us do the things that Jesus did turn from sin, no longer walk in it anymore, but follow in the righteousness of Christ, our wonderful and great God.
We thank you for saving us from death and delivering us into your eternal kingdom through the sacrifice and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Help us to live as Jesus did. Help us to pay attention to the conviction that is in our heart by the Holy Spirit of God.
Never, never let us get comfortable with that conviction. But it leads us to turn from sin, to continue in sanctification of being made holy before God as we mature in the faith that we have been called into by the Holy Spirit of God.
Shape us and mold us in these things according to your word, abide in us and we in you that we might show the wonderful works of Christ in all that we do, loving our neighbor as ourselves, loving the brothers as we have been commanded to do.
Thank you for the great love that you have shown us in Jesus name. Amen.
This is when we understand the text studying God's word to reach all the riches of full assurance in Christ. Thank you for subscribing and if this has ministered to you, please let others know about our program.
Here once again is Pastor Gabe Hughes.