A Measure or Gauge for Our Lives — Mose Stoltzfus

Amen. Well, Christian greetings to everyone in the worthy name, that great name, Jesus Christ. We still love that name and trust that we will ever love it. Well, I've been blessed much today by the interaction that we've been able to have with God's people.

We had breakfast this morning with a few of the local brethren and some from Brunson and that was a blessing. And then to be here this afternoon and the intermission here over supper time has been another one.

My, it's so sweet for God's children to gather together that know each other and love each other and have that common bond in the Spirit of God. That is an amazing thing. I've seen it over the years halfway around the world that I've been to places where you can connect with people in the Spirit in a moment.

In a moment. And that's the way it has been here and I just rejoice in that. Well, sometimes I feel like it's time maybe to switch from milk to meat in meetings like this but we know there are new people that are coming in toward the weekend here and I think we will give another message that I believe is milk basically but also something that I believe that all of us Christians, at least I for myself, need to take a look at from time to time.

God's Word as the Measure of Our Lives

And that is I would like to look at God's Word as a measure or a gauge for our life. Now, if you want to tell me or think with me just for a little bit, what's the first thing you have to know in order for me to help you find your way to a certain place?

Somebody want to venture to say, what's the first thing you have to know? You have to know where you're at. If you don't know where you're at, I can't tell you where you're going, where you need to go.

And I think that is what we want to look at tonight. I have a number of points from one of the answer books to this question. You know, in the back of the book we usually find the answers. And that's the way it is with this great book I have up here, the Word of God, and I call that 1 John.

Let us turn our Bibles to the book of 1 John, answers in the back of the book, or what I'd rather look at here tonight is a measure or gauge for our life. And the reason I say I need to do this at times, it's very important that we need to examine whether, even those of us who have been Christians for a number of years, whether the proper fruit is coming out of our lives.

The Bible warns us very specifically of a person that the Word of God is choked out of their lives and they become unfruitful. It doesn't say that they've never had any fruit. It simply says, he becometh unfruitful.

And that is something that looms up to me and to my heart and mine from time to time, and I recognize when I read a scripture like that, that it is actually possible that we become so routine and ritualistic in our Christian life and experience that nothing is happening.

We haven't won a soul to Christ for the last five years. We are not praying for the salvation of somebody's soul. We are not actively involved in helping people to find Christ. We just kind of go to work and come home and do our thing and read our books and do our pleasures and go to church on Sunday and have about enough religion in our lives to somehow pat us on the back that we're not a heathen and we're not all that bad, you know, but we have become unfruitful in our lives.

So, tonight will you examine with me a list of questions that we want to ask out of this great book, 1 John? I don't know how you look at that book, but I like that book because I like things black and white.

As you know by now, I've kind of given myself away. I don't like the gray. I either like to know whether I'm in or whether I'm not in or whether I'm saved or whether I'm lost or whether I'm going to heaven or not going to heaven or whether I'm progressing in my Christian life or not.

That's seemingly the only way I know how to live or how to be, and so it's not imperfection, but I like when things are black and white and that's the way it is in 1 John, and I believe in reality. We live in a gray world today, but I can tell that I can sense that one of these days this gray stuff is going to get blown out of here, and we're going to be black and white.

We're going to know whether we're in Christ or whether or not we're going to either follow Christ and lose our heads for it or be persecuted, and be persecuted or else we're going to follow the antichrist and take the mark of the beast in order to have our jobs and have some bread to eat and continue going on in life.

You know, that's ultimately what the Bible says that things are going to come down to in the end. We're going to have to decide whether we're going to follow Christ or the antichrist, and we're going to have to decide whether we're going to take the mark of God upon us or the mark of the beast upon us.

And the gray is all going to evaporate. So if you're hanging in gray, I tell you, you better get out of it now because one of these days you're going to have to come out of it. You're going to have to show your colors and get down off of the fence and decide where you're at and where you're going to be.

But it is of utmost importance tonight that we find out where we're at, and that simply is a simple thing in light of the Scripture. It simply means to apply the Word of God in an honest and open and practical way in our lives so we can tell whether we're going forward or backward, whether we're saved or whether we're lost.

And I think it's good for us sometimes to give ourselves a bit of a test and a check mark. You know, it's to see where we're at. That's how we find out, you know, we have a lot of gauges in order to find out where things are at.

Our forefathers, they got into some dangerous times when they used to do their threshing with a steam engine and they didn't have a proper gauge on their boiler in order to indicate the pressure. And there were more than one time that they were firing that boiler and the gauge was off or the gauge was stuck, you know, and the relief valve was stuck and that steam boiler blew to pieces and took men's lives with them.

And it becomes a very, very dangerous situation. We have a tire. We put a gauge on the tire to see what it needs there. Now, we have some other signs when we know what it needs there sometimes, but often when we want to be right, we put a gauge on there to find out where we're at.

And that's simply what I believe that God wants us to do with His Holy Word. God has given us the written Word of God as a gauge of truth and right, as a gauge of life or no life, and for us to sense and to know where we're at.

I can give you a thousand road maps this afternoon or this evening, but if you don't know where you're at, no road map in the world is going to show you the way where to get anywhere. You first have to discover where you're at before you can find out where to get to Fort Wayne or to anywhere else in the world.

The Light of God and the Test of Fellowship

All right, let us turn our Bibles to 1 John chapter 1 and begin to look at some of this. And I'm going to start in chapter 1 and end in chapter 5. And I can't put all the gauges here. John has a lot of them in these five chapters, but I'm going to pick some of them out and expound on them in order for us to bring that gauge upon our lives.

Now, in 1 John chapter 1, we're starting to read in verse 5. Then this, then, is the message which we have heard of him. And declare unto you that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. Did you know that?

God is light, and here is no darkness at all. And if you want to take the whole verse for what it means, then you have another test whether you know this and know it good enough that you are declaring it to someone else.

That's what John did. John says in verse 5, this, then, is the message that we have heard. And I believe there's a lot of people sitting here who have heard the message, but I'm wondering whether you've ever turned around after you've heard the message and declared it to someone.

Because that is a sure mark that you're convinced of your product. You know, we have some awful weak salesmen around for Christianity because they don't declare it. I always like when a salesman knows what he's talking about.

I had a corporate cleaning machine brought out to our church center there at Ephrata not too long ago, and an old man brought this machine out and I had to help him get the thing running and tell him a little bit, maybe try to help him make this thing work.

He didn't know this machine very good, and he was sent out by the company to represent it and to demonstrate it for me, and I had to help him get the thing running. He didn't know where all the switches were, all the buttons, whatever, and I was so discouraged in the first 15 minutes that I thought, I for sure probably will not buy this machine unless I can figure out it does the job that I want it to do without him telling me, because he was not sold on the product.

He didn't know the product, and yet that's what we have in Christianity far too much. There are such cheap and weak salesmen around, and they come out and they don't even know which buttons to push to make it work.

But I want to tell you that's the way it ought to be. We need to have something to declare to a lost and dying world, and we declare it. We don't suggest it. We don't hint of it. We don't whisper it. We declare it.

And you know there's a difference to those words. So, 1 John does that here, and I think that's right. We need to have something to declare, but then also it is that God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all.

God is light, and in Him is no darkness. All the religions of the world, whether you go see a Mormon or a Jehovah's Witness, he would paint the Lord Jesus not to be total light. And a Jew or many others likewise, well, he was a good man, he was a prophet, but he was not the Son of God, and you know they paint him half dark.

Well, that's impossible. If he's not the Son of God, if he's not the only begotten Son of God, then he lied. In Him is no darkness at all. If he is truth, then he is entirely truth. And you don't need to doubt one word he said.

And that's the way it is, incidentally. He's God and he cannot lie, and what he speaks is the truth. No darkness at all. Now, verse 6, if we say that we have fellowship with Him and walk in darkness, we lie and do not the truth.

Now, that is not a small test. We better hold that gauge up and check ourselves as to what kind of a pressure is going on inside of us when a Bible healer says on the authority of the Word of God that if we say that we have fellowship, if we have a lip profession, and we don't even say that, you know, we just say we're a Christian.

And I don't know what that means in America anymore, in Canada. It doesn't really mean anything for the most part in our society. It is so weak. But if we say we are a Christian and we have fellowship with God, and we walk in darkness, then we are lying.

If you say you have fellowship with God tonight, and you are practicing witchcraft yet, and curious arts that come from the netherworld, the satanic world, then you are in darkness and you're lying. You cannot say you are a Christian and go have your arm pumped to see whether some vitamin is good for you in the act of kinesiology, or have some other witch doctor try to declare what's wrong with you by divination, you can't do that.

You can't have any part of that darkness. You need to get out of that man's office and go home, and never go back again, you see. There needs to be a sharp line between light and darkness in the Word of God.

And that is such a sad subject today. There are so many people who claim they are Christians, and they are milling around in darkness, in devilish music, in all kinds of satanic strongholds. They are using prescription or non-prescription drugs which are mind-altering.

And those things have to do with darkness, not light. Now don't say, God says, don't say that you walk in the light and that you have fellowship with God, and then turn around during the week when nobody is watching, and walk in darkness.

If you do that, the Bible says you are lying. I didn't say it. Not originally. I am only saying what God says. And we must learn that God is truth, and in Him is no lie, and when He says it, then we better change our theology to believe what God says.

And adjust all of our life according to it, you see. That is a challenge to me as well as to you. I tell you, we don't have the option. We are not talking, it's a little bit more discipleship tonight, maybe, than experiential salvation.

But we don't have that option to have an experience of salvation and say, we have fellowship with God, we are born again, we are saved and all that, and walk in darkness, in satanic darkness. And yet I don't know hardly anymore, there are few leftover churches left in America who will not use the devil's music in their church services when they would all say they believe in God.

And I say they are liars, they are in darkness, they obey not in the truth, and they are not having fellowship with God. Because God will not come down and show up if you worship God or try to worship Him with the devil's music.

God can't handle that. You will offend the Spirit. He will leave if you play the devil's music and call it praise and worship. Mark it down. This thing is coming down to our head. Recently I picked up a book by a Luciani, I believe his name was something like that.

I have the book in the motel. Can't say the man's name, he just came out of contemporary Christian music and he laid this whole thing bare to the line, what his own experience was and how the devil and wicked evil spirits and sensuality came upon him in the praise and worship practice and service in the Sunday morning in his church for years, until finally he woke up and recognized what was happening, renounced the whole thing and left it.

You cannot have contemporary Christian music where you are. It's like the African said when he came to the missionary's house and his teenagers were playing contemporary Christian music. You know, the African said, how come he's calling up the demons?

How come the missionary's son is calling up the demons? He knew what kind of music it was, but that's just one. I'm just throwing a few things out there. This is the scrutiny that you and I must come under as we search God's Word in order that we know whether we are on track or even whether we're going to the right church or not.

I tell you, if you're going to a church that's playing contemporary Christian music, the devil's rock music with Christian words, you need to get out of that church. And find one that sings hymns and spiritual songs and does not play the devil's music with it.

Good examination for the evangelical world, I would say. I would say, amen. But God is going to ask that of us. He's going to put us to the test there. And I believe that those that are people that are innocently and ignorantly perhaps and have not understood this light right away when they become a Christian.

But I say, for the most part, I have to tell you that the inner witness of the Spirit of God in your lives, if you're a born-again Christian, ought to scream when the devil's music shows up inside of you.

You don't always have to scream out loud maybe, but I think it would be good if you do that too sometimes. Let everybody know that you're out of here if that's going to happen. I think that is no small thing.

The sick sensuality and devilish music that is being played in the churches, it's not of God. Next, in verse 7, if we walk in the light as He is in the light, notice the connection. We need to walk in the light as He, Christ, is in the light.

We have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanses us from all sin. And I believe that is saying that there is an ongoing cleansing power that works in our lives if we are walking in the light that we have and that God gives us.

We do not have all of the light immediately when we are converted. God gives us light and increases that light as we are going on and we grow in our Christian life and experience. But I want to tell you, if you walk in the light that God has shown you, in the Word of God, the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses you from all sin and you are saved in Him.

But if you don't walk in the light, and you go against that light, and you walk in darkness, then something drastically is going to happen to you. And you are not going to grow and you are not going to prosper in your Christian life and experience.

Alright. Beautiful verses. Verse 8. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. Now that's another one. It's plain and simple, black and white. There it is. Multitudes of people have done it over the years.

Had an experience with God. Believed they had a total eradication of the old man. There is absolutely no fight left with the devil, with sin, with the flesh, with the world. And since I am free from all sin, there is absolutely no sin in me left anymore.

If you say that, He says here, you are deceived and the truth is not in you. If you do not see the fight, if you do not see the war that we are in, with the flesh, with the world, with the devil, then it's very clear that you don't understand the Christian life.

That's what He says. This is John now. This is the answers in the back of the book. This is what the standard, this is how God is trying to clean up the fog that is going on in Christendom. It was like when this book was written, He knew what we would face in the year 2003.

Isn't it? Just like He knew what we would face. And He wrote that thing and it just goes right down in all the doctrinal garbage that we have to wade through and swim through in order to stay straight and to keep our lives in the light and in the truth of the Word of God.

But, here it is. And God is good to us tonight in giving that to us. Bless His name. Well, that's right. We have that crystal clear according to that. Alright, let's go to the second one. It is in chapter 2, verse 4.

In chapter 2, verse 4. I have that written down wrong here. I had chapter 3, but it's in chapter 2, verse 4. It says in verse 4, verse 3 says, Hereby we do know that we know Him, if Sergeant IF stands up and says His name, IF we keep His commandments.

Now, first of all, I want you to see here that you have a clear test in just looking at the context of the verse, Hereby we know that we know Him. Isn't that interesting when our preachers tell us you can't know?

And the Bible says we not only can know, but we can know that we know. No wonder we need to get an English Bible, right? You fellas, you Germans. That's right. Because we are told you can't know, nobody can know that they're saved, and all at once we find out, we kind of stumble across these precious scriptures in the English language that we can know that we have eternal life, and not only that we can know, but we can know that we know.

And I say, I don't know how to get any clearer, any surer than that. Here again, black's black, white's white. We can know whether we are in Christ or we are not in Christ. We have that ability to search that out by the written Word of God.

Let me lift up this great book. I tell you, it will guide your feet, it will guide your life from here on until the day that you die, if you let it. If you are grounded in the doctrine of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being your chief cornerstone, you can be saved, and you can have the assurance of not being deceived.

I believe that. God is able to keep us from falling. I do not believe in this save, loss, save, loss ten times a day that some people accuse us of. I believe of a security in Christ, a clear direction, a knowing where we're going, and I also believe that we can be so tenaciously attached to the Word of God in prayer and asking God to show us the truth that we will not be deceived.

And I know that that's maybe a little risky because we can say a man who's deceived doesn't know he's deceived. And that is true. But if you will not depart from the Word of God and wanting to know the truth from this book through prayer, asking God to show it to you and reveal it to you, you will not be deceived.

God promises us that. It's when some extra-biblical revelation comes in. And let me just elaborate on that because we have tons of it today in the form of books and tapes and radio and television and videos and what have you, where men say, God told me, and they have no evidence that the Bible agrees with what God told them.

And they can say all night long and all day long that God told me and God showed me, but I tell you, if it doesn't correspond with the Word of God, it wasn't my God that I'm preaching about tonight. It was some God with a little g maybe that told you or that showed you, but it was not the God of heaven.

And it was not Jesus of Nazareth. It was someone else. And I want to tell you, that is possible. You can find other gods that will talk to you and other gods that will give you dreams. And that's another one.

You know, the people in Indiana are highly dream-oriented. And be careful, God has spoken to many a person through a dream, and that's in the Bible. But you've got to be careful that the dream corresponds with the Word of God.

If it doesn't, throw it in the cornfield. You don't want to go after a dream that is not substantiated and doesn't give you the same voice as the Word of God. When I was young, I don't know about you Amish men, but when I was young, we were taught that if you keep a letter from Magneberg, Germany, and you display it on your wall and publicize it, you know, when an angel came down and gave this message in Magneberg, Germany, there's no lightning or thunder will strike into your building.

But my father came to the glorious realization that if that would be true, it would be in the Word of God. And he burned the letter. And my relatives would have thought, lightning might have struck the next night.

You know, they would have been so fearful of it. But it never did, as long as my father lived. He never had lightning hit his barn. And he defied that letter. That if that would be true, Jesus would have told us.

But it was an extra-biblical revelation. And that is what is taking much of Christiandom down the wrong road. Watch the Christian bookstore. It's not so Christian anymore. Watch the videos. Watch all those new ideas that are coming around where people claim they have a revelation from God, and God has shown them some new thing, and we examine it with church history and the Word of God.

It's never been known, never been done, never been believed that we've heard or read about. Watch out. It's probably one of those that belong in the cornfield too. Be not deceived. Don't you be deceived.

In the last days, one of the signs of the last days is major deception. Major deception. Where people will rise up and declare fantastic things. And we have that today. We were just reminiscing over that over breakfast this morning and how we can hardly keep up when we can't.

We can hardly keep up with a flood of those kind of things coming in upon the Christian world and books being circulating around and literature and what have you. And it's just one after the other. Those kind of things come out.

Groups of people think that they have found a superior level of all time in the Christian church, in methods of healing, or in understanding how the Christian life works through the interpretation of a tabernacle, or how to make money and how to take the curse of poverty off of your pocketbook and off of your checkbook and off of your business and on and on and on this stuff goes.

And that is never in the Bible. Those things that they claim. May God help us and keep us free from deception in these last days. But here we have this point that if you love God and you can know that you know Him if you keep His commandments.

And here is a very, very simple truth. You cannot separate knowing God from keeping the commandments of God. Don't you come to that Christianity that believes that once you know God that nothing else matters in the Bible.

And that the commandments of God are not important. They are kind of there for our option, you know. You can take them or leave them, but they are not really important. All that matters is you love Jesus in your heart and that is all that matters.

And they make it sound other, strange, different and like the commandments would not be part of the law or commandments of God or the Word of God like it is some other book that is written. But that is not what John says.

John says very clearly, whereby we know that we know. In other words, the package of assurance or the essence of assurance of salvation is encapsulated in heartfelt obedience to the Word of God. And there are not many people who want to hear that today.

Not many at all. You go through the Christian church, the Christian community, the Christian world, that is not what they are saying today. That is not what they are believing. But that is why I believe that when you find a commandment of God in the Word of God, then you ought to set your heart to do it.

After you are a Christian. Not before. Then it becomes dead letter and all that. But once you have been born again and God has washed you in His blood, then how do you maintain that assurance that you know that you know that you are a child of God?

It is simply by whether you have a heart to obey everything God shows you. And then you know you are a Christian. And you can have the assurance. And you can believe you are on your way to heaven. But if you have a heart that, I don't like this.

I don't like this obedient stuff. That is legalism. That must have been for them back there. I don't want to hear it. I don't want to do it. I don't want to believe it. You are probably a liar. The truth isn't in you.

Examine yourself. Put up the gauge. Know where you are at. That is what he is saying. Alright. See that says, verse 4, I know him and keepeth not his commandments. He is a liar. And the truth is not in him.

God says. God says. If he says, I know him. I am a Christian. And keeps not his commandments. He is a liar. And the truth isn't in him. Number 3. Chapter 2, verse 9. He that saith, he is in the light, and hates his brother, is in darkness even until now.

He that loveth his brother, abideth in the light, and there is not occasion of stumbling in him. Now I believe that it has to do with the Christian brother, not your earthly brother. Now I believe we should also love our earthly brothers, our brothers in the flesh, but there are sometimes major discrepancies in belief and doctrine coming there where it's not as easy to love there.

And we still have the commandment that we should love on our part, but as far as having that communication, it's not always possible in the flesh. But with the children of God, God is saying, your brethren, you cannot hate God's children.

You cannot move against God's children. You cannot cast your vote against God's children to put them out of the synagogue. Now, if you're a Christian, you can't. No way. That is going to be a test in your Christianity.

If you can sit in those churches and put out the Christian and put out the man who has assurance of salvation, who has been born again and has the change in his life, then you forfeit your own Christianity.

You've simply given yourself away. Because we have a relationship no other group of people have on the face of the earth. We are brethren. We are brethren closer than our earthly brethren. We know each other.

We understand each other. I was once in Russia, and I met some brethren there, never knew of them, heard of them before in my life. I walked in there, and within five minutes, I knew they were my brethren, and they knew I was one of theirs.

You know, it was during communist years yet, back in 1988. They didn't suspicion me, and I didn't suspicion them. They didn't think, what's this, some kind of a KGB fellow coming in, looking like this, you know, to check out what's going on in here.

They never asked me a question concerning that. They knew. They knew. And I knew. We have that secret connection in the Spirit. Our spirits bear witness, one with another. We know he's a brother. He knows we're a brother.

And we have that connection, and the world cannot figure it out. Some time ago, we experienced that back home in our fellowship. We had a sinner who sat in the back for a number of weeks. He was a wayward son of one of our families who had just moved into the area, and they brought this rebel boy along, and he was a sinner.

He never was a Christian. He never was a believer. And he would stand in the back of the church and watch us. And he would watch us connect with total strangers. Somebody would come, you know, like you people are.

Some of you I never met until this weekend. And you know how it is. We meet each other, and something clicks, and we know each other, and we know we're brothers, and we greet each other like we are long-lost friends, you know?

And this sinner sat back there, and he stretched his head, and he couldn't figure out how do those people know that? And I tell you, I just rejoiced in my heart that such a testimony is possible in the Christian church, and that's the way it ought to be.

And God is simply exemplifying this by 1 John 2 here when He says in verse 9, He that says he's in the light and hates his brother, cannot stand him, and begins to make many derogatory statements against the true brother in Christ, he's in darkness even until now.

He's never been a Christian. He's in darkness even until now, He says. If he doesn't love God's children, if he just hates his brother. And you know you have that? You know, some of you fellows that are going around here witnessing, and I know it, you can go into certain places and people despise you when you walk in their door.

They don't want you there. They're terribly uncomfortable with you. They can't wait till you leave. They don't want to be rude sometimes, but they don't love you one iota. And you can tell it. You can feel it.

But when you're a Christian, you must love the brethren, and stick up for them, and stand up for them, and enjoy them, and bless them, and have fellowship with them. Now I know it gets a little gray sometimes when we hardly know what some people are that are claiming all kinds of things and yet don't have the fruit.

And you know, it gets out there where God's going to have to clear it up for us, and I know He will one of these days, but for the most part, like I say, I didn't have any problem in these meetings at all.

You've come in here and I've never met you before, some of you, and yet I just didn't have any problem at all to know that you're God's children. And I thank God for that. That isn't in my expertise. That's just simply a witness, a gift from God that He gives us children.

And we have it. If we walk in the light. If we walk in the light. That's one of the great things that God gives us. Alright, number four. Chapter 2, verse 13. I write unto you fathers, because ye have known Him, that is from the beginning, I write unto you young men, young men, listen to this, I write unto you young men, because ye have overcome the wicked one.

Did you ever notice, I'm sure you have, in the seven churches of Asia, how our Lord Jesus, through the Apostle John, writes that message to the church and over and over again says, to Him that overcometh, He's going to sit with me and wear a white robe and give Him a name above every name or some, you know, all kinds of rewards there that are given.

And that is a blessing to the Christians so beautifully here. But He gives us the test, young men, young men, I write unto you, because ye have known Him, once you know Jesus from the beginning, I write unto you young men, because ye have overcome Satan, overcome the wicked one.